Religious people -- and by this I mean people who are deeply committed to a religion and aspire to live in accordance with its scriptures -- usually fear science; they suspect that science contradicts some of their cherished beliefs, beliefs they are asked to accept on faith. And because many believe that the best defense is offense, the religious often attack science and scientists, and widen the gulf that separates these branches of contemporary culture. This is regrettable, for throughout history every enduring culture embraced the best of its dominant religion, together with the rational and empirical ideas that made up the science of its time. The current gulf is all the more regrettable as it's based on a fundamental misconception. Indeed, on two misconceptions: of the nature of religion, as well as of science.
The average religious person identifies the religion that he or she espouses with the doctrines of that religion. These are the sacred scriptures created by the founders and prophets of that religion. For the most part they are centuries old, and contain sayings, episodes, and injunctions that are said to come from a higher, superhuman authority.
If it is its doctrines that make up a religion, then there are reasons for the faithful to fear science, or at least a dominant (mis)conception of science (and the misguided souls who embrace that misconception). It's always possible that science will fail to recognize that the sayings, episodes, and injunctions that make up the literal content of the doctrines come from an undisputable superhuman authority. Scientists are not disposed to accept claims on faith; they are trained to ask for proof -- for empirical proof. If it's not available, then they might say that the sayings, episodes and injunctions are unproven, and could be mistaken. In that case the religious would have good reason to fear science (or at least those who believe that science would pass judgment on the literal meaning of religious scriptures); their deepest convictions would be in question.
But this fear is unfounded. It's based on a misconception of the true nature both of religion, and of science.
Religion doesn't simply consist of the doctrines that make up its sacred scriptures. There is far more to religion than that. And it's not the case that science would take religious doctrines at face value and pronounce their content either true or false. There is far more to science than that.
Both religion and science are sourced in human experience. True, they are sourced in a different kind of experience, and science can tell us that they are conveyed by a different hemisphere of the brain: religion is right-hemispheric, and science, left-hemispheric. Human experience encompasses both.
Religion is based on the right-hemispheric experience of its founders, saints, and prophets. These must have been deep and vivid experiences, for they had a remarkable power to affect the heart and the mind of those around them. The founders, and even more their disciples, sought to communicate the substance of these experiences. They did so in the language, and with the concepts of their time. Their followers made the mistake of taking the record of the experiences for the essence of the experiences. They mistook the letter of religion for its spirit.
True scientists would not confound the record of a religious experience with the meaning of that experience. They would not judge a religion by the literal veracity of the sayings, episodes, and injunctions contained in its doctrines; they would ask about their roots in lived experience. And they would seek to understand that experience.
Analyzing the nature and meaning of religious experience is not a threat to the religious. On the contrary, it can prove to be a support. Because when the deep religious experience is analyzed with the methods of a science, a remarkable finding comes to light. The religious experience has aspects and elements that make it consistent with the world scientists discover on the basis of empirical experience.
Strange? Perhaps, but it is so. Psychiatrists such as Stanislav Grof find that in meditative, prayerful, or otherwise altered states of mind and consciousness, people have access to the kind of mystical or transcendent realities that make up the substance of all great religions. This doesn't mean that science can "verify" the metaphysical reality of these visions and entities. To establish their reality is not simply to see whether they correspond to the entities and processes that make up the content of valid scientific theories; it calls for careful reasoning and a further development of our understanding of the perceptual and cognitive powers of the brain, and of the consciousness associated with it. This development is already underway -- among other things, recent attempts to discover the quantum-receptivity of microtubules and other subneuronal arrays in the brain point to it. It appears that we can apprehend far more of the reality in which we are embedded than we had thought. In addition to its standard information-processing circuits, the brain has quantum-receptive capacities, picking up information that's instantaneous, multidimensional, and "nonlocal."
Work in this area is still in progress, but we can be reasonably certain already that there are aspects and planes of human experience that far transcend the limits of everyday experience. As Shakespeare remarked, there are more things in this world than you and I had ever conceived.
Entering on a plane that is deeper or higher than that of everyday experience is what the religious experience is all about. And trying to understand how we can connect with that plane is one of the most exciting tasks facing science today.
The sincere religious has nothing to fear from the genuine scientist. On the contrary, the religious and the scientist have much to learn from each other. Together they will achieve a better understanding of the deep reality that surrounds us and grounds our own existence. Isn't it time to begin to explore that reality together -- instead of fearing and fighting each other?
Follow Ervin Laszlo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ErvinLaszlo
Kingsley Dennis, Ph.D.: Quantum Consciousness: The Way to Reconcile Science and Spirituality
My take on all of this is that Science shows us the Hand of God, while the Bible points Science toward new understandings relating to our existence. Thank Science, but Praise God!
What worries me is when spirituality and personal signifigance are coopted by religion... religion being the institutional practice of a particular method of devotion. While spirituality can only ever directly harm the subject itself (and others through inducing irrationality in the subject) religion makes it resoundingly possible to visit ludicrous amounts of suffering upon everyone in reach... not only possible, but *acceptable*, ENDORSED even.
I am not hostile towards the world of the subjective, nor am I hostile towards spiritual mindsets. I AM hostile towards the substitution of religion for reality, and the abuses that result.
The more we eliminate the abstracts the easier it is to see the unseen through the mind's eye and hostility is eliminated. Without the new birth that's impossible, social man are programed to be hostile toward anything not meeting their desire for sameness, which isn't found in existence at any one time.
Science asks (and tries to answer) "How?"
Religion asks (and tries to answer) "Why?"
Science answers both questions honestly, discerning by the preponderance of evidence or lack thereof.
Religion's sole purpose is to subject humanity to the worship of some deity, not to answer "How" or "Why" questions. It denies humanity the freedom to question, challenge, explore, discover without condemning and attacking those freethinkers who refuse to be enslaved to it's master. It demands gullible acceptance, unflinching obedience and primitive rituals.
Science can explain how a planet is formed, not why. Why is a rationalization or a description of intellectual intent. It is philosophical; an abstraction, while science looks at the measurable.
"Why are we here when the odds were so slim that this one version of reality is what we'd end up with?" is not a question science can answer, because the question is loaded in the first place. We're here because things happened in the order they happened, for all their myriad individual reasons. So for religious folks to assume we're here because God wanted it that way would assume that we are some incredibly important, vitally necessary ultimate goal of the universe, rather than simply the product of it.
Science has no opinion on the first, but plenty of data about the second.
Both questions fall within the realm of Science; it is simply that one is objective and the other is subjective. Religion seems more concerned with providing a balm against the trouble of exerting any critical thought at all.
Religion uses a pseudo-philosophy as a cloaking device and lure to mask it's prime objective, to bait and indoctrinate humanity to the submission and worship of some insecure, unsubstantiated deity in need of veneration and praise... Or is it for the empowerment of the promoters???
Didn't someone say "Follow me. I shall make you fishers of men". [Matthew 4:19] Democracy killed the man. His followers made of him a god.
Religion's Achilles Heel is that it can't be seen to be wrong or bad. Both science and philosophy have shown it to be wrong and evil, time and time again. Religious history is a tale of much evil done in the name of good. The evil is quickly covered up in a cloak of good. "God has a plan." Wow!
Whatever religion one might follow, I find there is something most displeasing and dishonest in it's fraudulent fakery and pretense of a noble purpose. They seek to convince the gullible that they know "The Truth" and only they have the answers to the "why" questions. The tragedy is that most of humanity is gullible. Yet, the indoctrinated need to be pitied. Through no fault of theirs, they can't see it. Such is the effect of indoctrination, achieving strongest results when two year old children are subjected by their parents.
WhatTheHolyHeck is desperately seeking to find that religion has some noble cause that science cannot or does not address. Shame.
I'm always angered when the same people that call science the work of the devil thank the Lord for some life-saving procedure. Yes, you're thanking our Lord for science.
Like Hawkings said "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works."
Without actually saying it, i think the author has falsely equated universal common descent via evolution with all of science as if no science exists outside of this one topic.
Thanks for your thoughts.
The process of living Jesus' teaches causes one to have mystic experiences necessary comprehend what's seemingly miracles.
Science leave less and less space for religious views.
The gods that formerly could do almost anything are now hiding behind dark matter or in obscure places in Universe far away.
Now the religious folks try to set up some symmetry - between religion and science - like here is what we do (like if they'd really do anything), and here is what you do......
Like - you guys go on doing hard work, finding our about the world and about the Universe, and we will write vague mix of mythology and pseudo-scientific terminology, and will get a credit for ... at least for something.
No, too late. In past - sure - in past they did not want symmetry, they wanted everything:
Accordingly to Holy Office of Rome, the discovery of Copernicus about Earth circling the Sun was "philosophically foolish and absurd and formally heretical, inasmuch as it expressly contradicts the doctrines of Holy Scripture in many places, both according to their literal meaning and according to the common exposition and interpretation of the Holy Fathers and learned theologians."
What few people realize is religion was originally a primitive means of explaining existence. Most every type of scripture and oral traditions are actually explanations of how existence came into play in metaphors. My finding is the Bible is the one most extensive book of metaphors explaining existence's cycles, much of science's findings are interpretations of the metaphors.
As I've stated before, if one wants to explain the body they would integrate all aspects of it, its head, brain, ears, mouth, noes, throat, stomach, lungs, intestines, heart, and the rest; if one want to describe existence they'd have to use every concept known to any man to explain it. Everything in the body is necessary for explaining it, so everything and concept in existence are necessary to explain it.
The last four hundred years have been a steady encroachment of science on things previously thought to be the sole province of religion. Eventually there will be nothing left. The religious know and fear this. As a religious person I welcome it, because the greater reality, God, whatever is what's left when all human constructions are gone.
and the upper case makes it more what?