A Hindu Perspective: Science vs. Spirituality

[Angrboda]

Spirituality can never be understood by science.

Since you haven't defined what spirituality is, we have no idea what you're saying can't be understood by science.

For example only a few hundred years ago, most people, including scientist believed the world to be flat.

That's a myth.  If you base your ideas about science on myths then you are sure to go wrong.

Only when there is a drastic change in knowledge, does reality change.

Reality doesn't change, only our knowledge of it does.

The big discoveries that changed the very face of science where looked at as outrageous and only when a few courageous outliers in the field of science dared to push the norms did the reality of science change.

"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
~ Carl Sagan

Another analogy that would apply to the world we live in today ......

Zzzzzzz.  Analogies only prove what the author already believes.

The great sages and saints have been talking about a different reality than science for thousands of years.

No, they've been asserting a different knowledge of reality.  Until you can show otherwise, there is only one reality.

This reality has nothing to do with how we know science today, how we knew science in the past, or how we will probably know it in the future. Based on the works of these great saints and their direct experiences, we realize that when we talk about science and spiritually we are talking about two different realities.

That there are two different 'realities' is a metaphor, not a literal truth, until shown otherwise.

To explain with an analogy.....

Again, analogies don't prove anything.

To main point of this essay is to reinforce the point that spirituality and science are in two very different realities.

I thought the point of the essay was to show this.  What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Another analogy would be the dog and the table analogy.

Another analogy.....

The dog and the scientist are in two different realities, the dog would never be able to understand the scientist.

The dog would never be able to understand the scientist because he's a dog.

Are you ever going to get around to proving that there are two different realities?

So when we talk about trying to prove or disprove spirituality with science, it is like trying to convince a dog that a table is not just how he perceive the table to be. For the dog to believe that it is something more, it has to make an effort to learn from someone who has the knowledge to see the table in a different reality. In essence their needs to be some qualifications that the dog needs to gain, training that he needs to go through in order to perceive a different reality.

No amount of training is going to make a dog understand atoms.  Analogy fail.

When the saints and sages discuss a spiritual world, where things are not what they seem, they are in fact talking about a different reality, they are like a nuclear scientist perceiving the table to be made up of molecules and perceiving different purposes for the table than just something to pee on.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

When we understand that spirituality and science in the material world can be compared to two different realities [..]

Precisely.  They can be 'compared to' two different realities as metaphor.  You've shown nothing more than this.

[..] isn’t it then borderline arrogant for a scientist to assume that he has the qualifications to understand a different reality then he currently lives in, when he has not made one effort to qualify himself to understand the spiritual reality.

Only if this 'spiritual reality' is in fact different from plain old reality, a fact you've yet to establish.

The arrogance of the scientist can be compared to a person who was an education of a dishwasher approaching a rocket scientist and saying you are crazy, there is no way you can build something that could go to the moon [..]

You are implicitly saying that the saint has knowledge that a scientist lacks.  I can't help but think that if you were able to demonstrate this, then you wouldn't need all these metaphors and analogies.  Fail again.

We need to ask ourselves which reality are we in

You need to do a better job of showing there is more than one reality.

If we chose not to read the lives of saints and take their experiences as something real [..]

I accept the experiences of the saints as something real.  I don't extend that courtesy to their woo-filled interpretations of what their experience shows.

Scientists are arrogant to assume, like a dog, that their reality is actually the only reality that exists, and they dogmatically refuse to try and qualify themselves to understand a different reality.

Scientists don't assume.  The burden of proof is on the spiritualist to show that there is something to their ideas, and so far they have failed.

The saints are simply not respected by the majority of scientists, it’s a bit like a dog not respecting a nuclear physicist because he perceives what he is saying is so completely absurd that he must be crazy.

Not really.  You want spirituality to get a pass from skepticism.  If science needed a pass from skepticism, it wouldn't be worthy of the respect it has earned by demonstrating results.  You want the respect without having to show the results.  Sorry, it doesn't work that way.

In truth saints spent more time in qualifying themselves to understand the reality of the spiritual world than scientist have spent training to understand their fields. These saints have spent their whole life contemplating the spiritual life, to qualify themselves to gain insight into a different reality then the material world we live in. They can be compared to a dog breaking free from the animalistic qualities it was born with, and transforming itself to a nuclear physicist who can perceive a different reality. Qualifications to understand spirituality is not the same qualifications to understand dishwashing, or rocket science, it is in fact much more difficult. If we don’t spend the time to qualify ourselves, and similar to taking a few classes in our local university about rocket science think we can build a rocket to the moon, assume we think we can understand the spirituality reality, is simply arrogant on our behalf.

That's one big pile of bullshit.  
 

So the question is do you want to be a dog bound by the material reality imparted on you by your fellow dogs or do you want to transcend those qualities and try to qualify yourself to understand a different reality.

And there's the sales pitch.

You failed to establish what you claimed in your opening sentence, that spirituality is a distinct and separate reality.