Bridging the Divide Between Science and Religion
November 8, 2014 at 2:56 pm
(This post was last modified: November 8, 2014 at 3:05 pm by Mudhammam.)
In terms of how I've come to understand the origin and subsequent successes of a religion, the mystical experience always precedes the formulation or confirmation of the specific doctrinal beliefs. This is important to keep in mind.
Secularists often criticize religion as anti-scientific, and from this develop a conceptual framework in which science and religion are antithetical. Believers often object, directing the conversation to prominent thinkers of a religious bent or to their own personal triumph in compartmentalizing sacred creeds in such a way so as to avoid conflict with scientific insights about the nature of reality---and its continual display of antipathy towards our faith-based assumptions.
Religion addresses questions of meaning and value, certain gentlemen protest, offering resolutions most essential to man's basic ontological needs, resolutions that science in all its prestige and beauty can never be equipped to confront.
Yes and no.
Keeping in mind the first remarks, if the language used to describe mystical experiences is compared across religions of all stripes, more striking than the endless variations and mutually exclusive metaphysics are the similar themes in which mankind is depicted as a species cursed with inner conflicts and always seeking redemption for itself. Whether these faiths are monotheistic, pantheistic, atheistic, etc., the solution is in each case inevitably found in an alteration of a person's mental disposition. Whether stoic or epicurean, Christian or Buddhist, the answer centers around a single predominant issue: making sense of suffering.
To the extent that religion is understood as symbolic expression of fundamental states of consciousness, there is no conflict with the sciences, as the former is but an ancient language used to formulate the riddle and its solution (to the problem of suffering, inextricably connected to meaning and value), the latter a more descriptive and literal approach to understanding what that riddle actually is.
A Christian, for example, may find as much success in overcoming his or her tortured self as a Hindu, a feeling of boundless liberation from internal oppression and turmoil (which always determines the affect or strength of the turmoil) resulting from a serious commitment to the practice of their faith. The underlying principle, the need for projects that instill a sense of purpose and value within us, and the enlightenment achieved through sacrifice, says a lot about the character of humanity.
Only when religious symbolism is misunderstood to project direct (and often divine) light on objective states of the world, rather than simply revealing how individual interpretations of subjective interactions with the objective world can be useful--such as in creating an atmosphere that is conducive to resolving inner conflicts of the mind--does it infringe on the precision and objectivity of the scientific enterprise.
This happens quite a lot. A scientific understanding of religion demands a naturalistic account. That's not to deny the possibility of truth apart from a heuristic process, but it is to admit that knowledge can never be assured without a surgical examination of the wide-ranging possibilities presented by experience and its conceptual counterparts. To the extent that our reasoning is motivated by faith rather than a determination to make as few assumptions as possible about how we think nature ought to be, there is a genuine conflict with the methodologies demanded by science.
To summarize, both secularists and believers would benefit from taking religion more seriously. This amounts to recognizing the commonalities found along the spectrum of spiritual practice and their potentially beneficial relationship to our psychological needs. In formulating a philosophically fruitful and possibly scientific understanding, we might re-interpret a doctrine such as eternal life to coincide the basic fact that every material composing a living human being is as old as the Universe itself, and even after death, will be recycled in the perpetual creation and destruction of forthcoming objects. You literally possess constituents that fundamentally never decay. At this very moment, you may be inhaling a remnant of both Plato and Beethoven. While far-fetched, this example merely demonstrates that, through a scientific understanding of nature, we can and ought to revise ancient perspectives to the extent that we wish to feel entitled to their objective use. That is what is meant by contact with reality.
The universe is mysterious and grand. To surrender our intellects at the expense of tradition, rather than elevate traditional insights as our vision of an ever-expansive and perplexing world develops, is to cheapen both science and religion.
Secularists often criticize religion as anti-scientific, and from this develop a conceptual framework in which science and religion are antithetical. Believers often object, directing the conversation to prominent thinkers of a religious bent or to their own personal triumph in compartmentalizing sacred creeds in such a way so as to avoid conflict with scientific insights about the nature of reality---and its continual display of antipathy towards our faith-based assumptions.
Religion addresses questions of meaning and value, certain gentlemen protest, offering resolutions most essential to man's basic ontological needs, resolutions that science in all its prestige and beauty can never be equipped to confront.
Yes and no.
Keeping in mind the first remarks, if the language used to describe mystical experiences is compared across religions of all stripes, more striking than the endless variations and mutually exclusive metaphysics are the similar themes in which mankind is depicted as a species cursed with inner conflicts and always seeking redemption for itself. Whether these faiths are monotheistic, pantheistic, atheistic, etc., the solution is in each case inevitably found in an alteration of a person's mental disposition. Whether stoic or epicurean, Christian or Buddhist, the answer centers around a single predominant issue: making sense of suffering.
To the extent that religion is understood as symbolic expression of fundamental states of consciousness, there is no conflict with the sciences, as the former is but an ancient language used to formulate the riddle and its solution (to the problem of suffering, inextricably connected to meaning and value), the latter a more descriptive and literal approach to understanding what that riddle actually is.
A Christian, for example, may find as much success in overcoming his or her tortured self as a Hindu, a feeling of boundless liberation from internal oppression and turmoil (which always determines the affect or strength of the turmoil) resulting from a serious commitment to the practice of their faith. The underlying principle, the need for projects that instill a sense of purpose and value within us, and the enlightenment achieved through sacrifice, says a lot about the character of humanity.
Only when religious symbolism is misunderstood to project direct (and often divine) light on objective states of the world, rather than simply revealing how individual interpretations of subjective interactions with the objective world can be useful--such as in creating an atmosphere that is conducive to resolving inner conflicts of the mind--does it infringe on the precision and objectivity of the scientific enterprise.
This happens quite a lot. A scientific understanding of religion demands a naturalistic account. That's not to deny the possibility of truth apart from a heuristic process, but it is to admit that knowledge can never be assured without a surgical examination of the wide-ranging possibilities presented by experience and its conceptual counterparts. To the extent that our reasoning is motivated by faith rather than a determination to make as few assumptions as possible about how we think nature ought to be, there is a genuine conflict with the methodologies demanded by science.
To summarize, both secularists and believers would benefit from taking religion more seriously. This amounts to recognizing the commonalities found along the spectrum of spiritual practice and their potentially beneficial relationship to our psychological needs. In formulating a philosophically fruitful and possibly scientific understanding, we might re-interpret a doctrine such as eternal life to coincide the basic fact that every material composing a living human being is as old as the Universe itself, and even after death, will be recycled in the perpetual creation and destruction of forthcoming objects. You literally possess constituents that fundamentally never decay. At this very moment, you may be inhaling a remnant of both Plato and Beethoven. While far-fetched, this example merely demonstrates that, through a scientific understanding of nature, we can and ought to revise ancient perspectives to the extent that we wish to feel entitled to their objective use. That is what is meant by contact with reality.
The universe is mysterious and grand. To surrender our intellects at the expense of tradition, rather than elevate traditional insights as our vision of an ever-expansive and perplexing world develops, is to cheapen both science and religion.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
