Science, Religion, and God
One thing that troubles me about our current state is science and spirituality are viewed as being at odds with one another.
Sure religion and science have run-ins, religion is a belief system, science is supposed to be a process, but after years of vested interest it often becomes an equally stagnant belief system.
There are things that we are told in the Bible that if applies to science would accelerate rather than retard it's advancement. The Bible tells us not to be proud and arrogant. A problem that seems to affect science is that people spend a lot of years studying to get letters after their name, then publish to earn a living. Their living comes to depend upon their reputation and there pride and arrogance become hard to resist. With that often comes an attitude that what has been learned is absolute and that everything is already known. Any evidence that contradicts that is an insult to the ego and discarded.
Science and direct spiritual experiences are two distinct ways of knowing, science deals with knowing that can be proven and demonstrated, but it is very poor at dealing with that which can't be easily proven or shared. Unfortunately, many natural phenomena fall into the latter category, especially those dealing with the more interesting aspects of nature such as consciousness.
Objectivity is highly prized, but impossible to obtain for it is impossible to rule out the role of the observer. Science often excludes spiritual experience and knowledge because objectivity is impossible to obtain, yet in truth, objectivity is impossible to obtain scientifically as well, the subject always affects the results.
Some areas that trouble me, science expounds the existence of the so-called "God part of the brain", suggesting that because seemingly spiritual experiences can be provoked by stimulating certain parts of the brain electrically or magnetically, that the spiritual experience is just a hallucination of sorts.
This logic is flawed, it is no different than saying because stimulation of the visual cortex creates visual effects, that everything we see is a hallucination.
What brain science fails to find or explain, is the man within the man. It can readily explain how various signal pathways and processing take place, but it can't explain why we subjectively experience something. A machines state doesn't automatically imply that the machine experiences that state, unless you suggest that all machines and perhaps everything is imbued with consciousness, and perhaps this isn't entirely off-track.
I believe that humanity would benefit if science and spirituality weren't always at odds with each other and if religions would be open to genuine spiritual exploration.
The more my understanding of both science and spirit evolve, the less they are at odds. I know that as a human being I can never fully understand God or God's plan, nor will I ever fully understand the universe that God created, but I am coming closer to understandings that are consistent both with observation and God's word.
I wish people could integrate these things more because they're both methods of knowing more about the same reality in which we live.
Sure religion and science have run-ins, religion is a belief system, science is supposed to be a process, but after years of vested interest it often becomes an equally stagnant belief system.
There are things that we are told in the Bible that if applies to science would accelerate rather than retard it's advancement. The Bible tells us not to be proud and arrogant. A problem that seems to affect science is that people spend a lot of years studying to get letters after their name, then publish to earn a living. Their living comes to depend upon their reputation and there pride and arrogance become hard to resist. With that often comes an attitude that what has been learned is absolute and that everything is already known. Any evidence that contradicts that is an insult to the ego and discarded.
Science and direct spiritual experiences are two distinct ways of knowing, science deals with knowing that can be proven and demonstrated, but it is very poor at dealing with that which can't be easily proven or shared. Unfortunately, many natural phenomena fall into the latter category, especially those dealing with the more interesting aspects of nature such as consciousness.
Objectivity is highly prized, but impossible to obtain for it is impossible to rule out the role of the observer. Science often excludes spiritual experience and knowledge because objectivity is impossible to obtain, yet in truth, objectivity is impossible to obtain scientifically as well, the subject always affects the results.
Some areas that trouble me, science expounds the existence of the so-called "God part of the brain", suggesting that because seemingly spiritual experiences can be provoked by stimulating certain parts of the brain electrically or magnetically, that the spiritual experience is just a hallucination of sorts.
This logic is flawed, it is no different than saying because stimulation of the visual cortex creates visual effects, that everything we see is a hallucination.
What brain science fails to find or explain, is the man within the man. It can readily explain how various signal pathways and processing take place, but it can't explain why we subjectively experience something. A machines state doesn't automatically imply that the machine experiences that state, unless you suggest that all machines and perhaps everything is imbued with consciousness, and perhaps this isn't entirely off-track.
I believe that humanity would benefit if science and spirituality weren't always at odds with each other and if religions would be open to genuine spiritual exploration.
The more my understanding of both science and spirit evolve, the less they are at odds. I know that as a human being I can never fully understand God or God's plan, nor will I ever fully understand the universe that God created, but I am coming closer to understandings that are consistent both with observation and God's word.
I wish people could integrate these things more because they're both methods of knowing more about the same reality in which we live.
posted by Nanook at 1:54 AM
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