When I was growing up, it was a different planet. I was part of an Irish-American Catholic family that knew exactly what to believe and how to behave. Theology had no fuzz or fog around it, and everyone knew that belief and behavior were the important things. There was no talk of meditation or yoga or spirituality. There was a lot of praying going on, but no interest in diets or gurus or the Dalai Lama.
The world has changed radically in the past 50 years, more radically than we think. Day after day new scientific developments chip away at the worldview that has shaped our lives. We don't notice the erosion until we go into a church and notice how empty it is or how old the people are who are present.
Science willingly takes the place of religion, offering explanations for how the world works, why we behave the way we do, and how to prolong life. Read the news carefully and you'll see scientists saying that they can now verify what we always knew to be true. Verify is from veritas -- truth. Science will tell us if our beliefs and intuitions meet the criteria of truth, whereas religion used to do that.
I'm not saying at all that we should go back to the religion of 50 years ago, but we should be aware that science is the new religion and that it demands our acquiescence as much as any religion ever did. It advocates a secular society, but as religion gives way, so do the roots of ethical behavior: important human practices like ritual, prayer, contemplation, reverence, a deep and expansive sense of community and an appreciation for the mysterious. We think we can live without a religious base, but without it our very souls shrivel.
So, we have a problem. We can't go back to old-time religion in familiar ways, and we can't go on bowing down before the scientific method. What is a person to do?
Let me offer a few hints:
First, we can return to old beliefs and deepen them and find a more intelligent way of understanding them. Any bookstore today has excellent resources. Many priests, ministers, rabbis and imams are equipped to offer a more adult view of the traditional teachings.
Next, today it's a necessity for a thinking person to learn about the many spiritual traditions of the world. Again, the sacred texts are available and well translated. Good books and films on the many traditions abound. If you haven't yet addressed this important aspect of your education, do so and you will find it deeply rewarding.
Then, you can find excellent thinkers in the arts, depth psychology and practical philosophy who will help you bridge science and religion. Many of my friends and I have found deep spiritual understanding in C. G. Jung and James Hillman, for example.
Finally, in an everyday, practical way you can create your own spiritual way of life. I model mine on the monastic life I experienced as a young man and think of myself as a monk in the world. I give work a spiritual dimension by making sure that it's ethical and honest and that as much as possible it makes an explicit contribution to the human community. I take time to contemplate nature and art, and I place my work on ecology within the scope of my spiritual activity. I adopt Albert Schweitzer's three-word philosophy: "Reverence for life." I apply that principle to my actions as much as possible, and I add variations on it: "service to humanity," "respect for the other," "advocate for beauty."
Behind all of this is a deep, open-ended notion of God that I learn from mystics in many spiritual traditions. No more bearded grandfather in the sky pulling the puppet strings. As many say, maybe God is such a mysterious and holy notion that the name should be used rarely, if ever. Your whole life could be a continuous deepening and deliteralizing of the idea of God to the point that it becomes more intense and influential in your life, even as it loses its naive clarity. Maybe it is only accessible in the most mysterious moments of reflection and prayer. I think we are all called to be mystics.
Yes, you can pray intelligently in this new world, but don't do it naively, as a throwback to a childish belief system. Have your prayer complement and fit snugly with your most recently informed scientific view of how things work. Never be unintelligent about religion again.
We grow our souls through an active, up-to-date, grounded, intelligent and personally relevant spirituality. Without it, life isn't worth living.
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Of course science and religion have produced amazing things for the benefit of humanity. Both have, often inadvertently or as a result of rigid practices, also produced harm. False idols and/or bad science do exist. And harm cannot always be avoided, as your work astutely shows. We all could learn from the places where errors have occurred.
Historically science and religion have been in tension with each other. Few seem to recall science grew out of a search for truth based on religious beliefs. Increasingly though the two seem to be understood in an either/or state. The impatient speed of culture is one culprit, the perceived need to make instant judgments another. Yet another is our understandings of the words we read and use. Ironically, when someone says to me they are not religious I hear them espousing a kind of spiritual commitment. It seems their spirituality does not have a language to support it outside the context of science. Similarly, when someone evinces a religious belief I listen for clues as to its critical depth. That is, is it attained through personal experience, or one could say, experiment.
Would that more of us would slow down to reconsider how religion and science are both important not only for us to thrive fully, but to survive.
Non-believers agree that you can't get something from nothing so the Universe had to some from something so that something could be termed the Creative Principle or as you please; no form no gender. Hindus describe "God" as the trinity Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva or creation/preservation/destruction aspect of existence. There shouldn't be a problem with this either.
For example when Jesus said "I and my father are one" he wasn't referring to God having a body, mind, senses like his. He was referring to his true nature. Many others have said the same thing. Science has devoted very little time and effort to exploring consciousness so why would it think it knows much about it?
So science and physics are the laws/framework by which creation is created/preserved/destroyed...get it? Take away the anthropomorphizing of God and one gets a different understanding of God.
A Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M
Science has been behind many of the good things that have happened in the past centuries, and contributed to the bad as well. Science is but a method to understand better. Religion, to me, is about what I cannot understand rationally. I'll lose some science folks right here, I'm sure, but hear me out. I have limits to my ability to understand: my brain can only absorb so much, I can't gather all the evidence, and, quite frankly, at age 50, I'm losing some of the brilliance of thought and memory I once had.
Religious practice changed as science developed-rather than remaining a mythic way to approach those things that remain mysterious, some began to take myths literally. The description of the "old-time religion" is really religion after this descent into literalism. True old-time religion acknowledges, and tries make some sense of, what remains mysterious. Even with today's science, mystery remains.
There's nothing wrong with trying to approach mystery rationally, but no one gets all the way to truth without speculation and faith in, at the very least, the prior work of others. I accept that the Earth is round...but I've not really done the science to convince myself. Which of us really understands quantum physics? Even master physicists have things they can't explain rationally. Yet.
http://reluctant-messenger.com/reincarnation-proof.htm
Reincarnation has been part of some versions of Judaism for centuries. Has religion mostly been indoctrinating children with the WRONG ideas?
But what turns up if you check the Bible on Enoch and Melchizedek?
http://www.quantumcritics.com/20080302438/miscellaneous/general/star-trek-meets-the-bible.html
LOL
What science and religion thought impossible has now happened. History has it's first fully demonstrable, Christian proof for faith. And it's called the Resurrection.
The first ever viable religious conception capable of leading reason, by faith, to observable consequences which can be tested and judged is now a reality. A teaching that delivers the first ever religious claim of insight into the human condition that meets the Enlightenment criteria of verifiable, direct cause and effect, evidence based truth embodied in experience. For the first time in history, however unexpected, the world must contend with a claim to new revealed truth, a moral wisdom not of human intellectual origin, offering access by faith, to absolute proof, an objective basis for moral principle and a fully rational and justifiable belief!
To test or not to test that is the question?
For as I turned there greeted mine like wise
What all behold who contemplate aright
that's Heavens revolution through the skies. Dante/ The Comedy/ Canto 23:13/ Paradise
More at http://www.energon.org.uk
This focus on Science, has brought on a certain “coldness” to life, lacking in “ritual, prayer, contemplation, reverence, etc..” This is evident in many facets of the worlds societies. You could even apply the same fundamental principle, that Mr. Moore has pointed out, to most all aspects of our lives. One example; we use email, texting, twitting to share what we think. Granted, there is a need to communicate better, but look at the lack of warmth that comes from these methods. I miss hand written letters.
The article is an acknowledgement that religion has been nearly abandoned. If there was more focus on ‘community’ and not separation, more thought given to something before we act or speak about it, and ultimately a complete reverence for life as a whole, then perhaps our lives would take on more meaning. The point is to respect life by not just reacting to it, but to be informed, to approach it with discernment rather than completely based upon what someone else says. Find YOUR truth, but do it in ways that are traditional approaches to religion, i.e.; ritual, prayer, contemplation and reverence.
I like to call it Loving life. Thanks, Thomas, for this article, and for showing us a sense of Soul that’s been denied for ages.
No one said he did. Beyond the author suggesting that science was a religion, which it isn't.
I completely disagree with this idea that science "has brought on a certain “coldness” to life". I have lived all my life as an atheist and someone interested in science and using technology. That includes a lifestyle devoid of things like prayer. My life is hardly cold. Science via the images of the Hubble telescope and all the other amazing stuff it has uncovered about the world enhances my life. Modern communication, including email and texting has added an opportunity to stay connected with friends and family when in a different state or country. There is no lack of warmth between me and my friends and family. In fact, the real time communication of images and talking about our days is frankly an improvement over hand written letters.
I'm sorry, but the article and your comment do bash my way of life. As if because I live a life without prayer and embracing science that some element of my life must be shriveling or cold. That is simply false.
news to me.
grrrrrrrrrrrr!
It is clear that the underlying physical process that is determining the response to the "moral choice" is happening from beyond the "I" in our experience. Consciousness is only a part of the brain/body's physical mechanism that determines our actions. From inside the conscious part of the mechanism the response is irrational; driven by feeling and sense. How this is represented in any individual brain seems to vary. Some brains experience transparently real god agents informing the "I", and others resist that interpretation. But the underlying source of the moral choice is the same.
Since all religions pretty much share core ethical beliefs, I'd guess that ethical behavior comes from our human nature itself.
The idea that religion, or any one religion represents the only basis for ethical behavior is fairly unethical, IMO.
Morality and conscience exists but not outside of God because He is the one who made us that way. You can't use design as evidence of no design because only design works.
Yes but it is not the rational "some agency that exists outside those laws" making it work. That is only in our heads. Science is nothing but the capacity for rational deconstruction, an evolutionary adaptation of a biological machine.