RE: Science and Religion cannot overlap.
August 12, 2014 at 8:17 am
(This post was last modified: August 12, 2014 at 8:21 am by bennyboy.)
I think Science and Religion can overlap just fine. However, the religion cannot be based on an obvious mythology.
There are aspects of religion that are behavioral and psychological. For example, repeating ideas over and over until they seep into the unconscious mind can affect a person's personality and mood. So can a call to make the self subservient to a greater whole.
You could repeat over and over "I am star dust. I am the soil of the Earth made fluid by the oceans and made animate by the energy of the Sun. Everything I consider my own is borrowed from the Great Universe from which all things are formed." I think there would be real benefit to doing this, as these ideas represent reality more accurately than most people's selfish egocentrism. Not only that, I think seeing yourself as a drop in the ocean is liberating-- it doesn't really matter, ultimately, if you become the top-ranked salesperson in your department, or whether your kids are all going to win Nobel Prizes. I think if you sat and thought about the universe AS WE KNOW IT, and how tiny we are, and about biology and we know it and how huge we also are, you could have a full-blown religious experience. (actually I have, thinking about QM and the near-total emptiness in everything-- cognitive meltdown ftw!)
We could teach our children that fighting is pointless. Why should startdust fight stardust? There's nothing to gain. Why be stressed? All the stress in the world won't stop my body, then the Earth, then the Solar System and galaxy from meeting their demise and being recycled into something new and yet equally wonderful.
We could go to church, where geology is taught along with metaphor: The Earth feeds us. Her life's blood emanates from valcanoes, filling the soil with the nutrients that we need to live. Her waters clean the air so that we can breathe. And in the end, the only really important thing we can do is not to destroy all the good that she has brought to us with selfishness and greed.
This religion could even ENCOURAGE science: "We must understand mother Earth as deeply as we can, so as to benefit from her gifts most greatly, and to protect her most effectively. We must understand the Great Universe as deeply as we can, so as to understand what we ourselves are."
There are aspects of religion that are behavioral and psychological. For example, repeating ideas over and over until they seep into the unconscious mind can affect a person's personality and mood. So can a call to make the self subservient to a greater whole.
You could repeat over and over "I am star dust. I am the soil of the Earth made fluid by the oceans and made animate by the energy of the Sun. Everything I consider my own is borrowed from the Great Universe from which all things are formed." I think there would be real benefit to doing this, as these ideas represent reality more accurately than most people's selfish egocentrism. Not only that, I think seeing yourself as a drop in the ocean is liberating-- it doesn't really matter, ultimately, if you become the top-ranked salesperson in your department, or whether your kids are all going to win Nobel Prizes. I think if you sat and thought about the universe AS WE KNOW IT, and how tiny we are, and about biology and we know it and how huge we also are, you could have a full-blown religious experience. (actually I have, thinking about QM and the near-total emptiness in everything-- cognitive meltdown ftw!)
We could teach our children that fighting is pointless. Why should startdust fight stardust? There's nothing to gain. Why be stressed? All the stress in the world won't stop my body, then the Earth, then the Solar System and galaxy from meeting their demise and being recycled into something new and yet equally wonderful.
We could go to church, where geology is taught along with metaphor: The Earth feeds us. Her life's blood emanates from valcanoes, filling the soil with the nutrients that we need to live. Her waters clean the air so that we can breathe. And in the end, the only really important thing we can do is not to destroy all the good that she has brought to us with selfishness and greed.
This religion could even ENCOURAGE science: "We must understand mother Earth as deeply as we can, so as to benefit from her gifts most greatly, and to protect her most effectively. We must understand the Great Universe as deeply as we can, so as to understand what we ourselves are."
