A few weeks ago I responded to a New York Times column in which the author expressed an inordinate level of confidence in the truth of his religious beliefs. That was disappointing; all I really wanted to talk about was Avatar. But few things annoy me more than claims to a monopoly on truth, so plans changed.
Here I’m going to take a bit of a different approach. As always, the caveat here is that at the end of the day, we don’t really know a damn thing. But the value in asking a question isn’t always in getting the answer.
As our knowledge of the natural world increases, it seems more and more like the scientific and spiritual worldviews, which many people – several hundred years into the debate –still tend to see as diametrically opposed to one another, are actually different vantage points onto a singular reality. One might even say that the difference between them is merely linguistic. Different words, same meanings.
As Pandit Gopi Krishna, an influential advocate for intellectual collaboration between Western science and eastern wisdom, explained: "Mystical vision, enlightenment and prophethood are the natural endowments of a more evolved human brain brought in tune with the spiritual realities of the universe."
This is one context, at least, in which to interpret certain developments within the scientific community which existing empirical data are hard pressed to explain. Take, for example, the oncologist who recently published a book entitled “Evidence of the Afterlife,” which chronicles the Near Death Experiences (NDEs) of some 1600 patients. The consistency in their descriptions of lucid experiences completely independent of brain function, he argues, is evidence that some part of ourselves lives on after death.
The Near Death Experience is one of a number of phenomena scientists and theologians invoke to close the gap between spiritual wisdom and scientific observation. Some, like Stephen Barr, find confirmation of age-old metaphysical claims in the discoveries of modern physics. More precisely, Barr argues in “Modern Physics and Ancient Faith” (reviewed here), religion does not butt heads with science at all; it conflicts only with scientific materialism, a philosophical stance no more “empirical” than God itself. Scientific materialism, by Barr’s definition, posits that “nothing exists except matter, and that everything in the world must therefore be the result of the strict mathematical laws of physics and blind chance.” It is essentially the flawed “idea that all of reality is nothing but physics.”
Abdu’l-Baha, the second leader of the Bahai faith, identified this as early as 1912, when he said that a man who pursues science alone would “make no progress, but fall into the despairing slough of materialism.” Despite Krishna’s acknowledgment that a man who eschews science in favor of religion “would quickly fall into the quagmire of superstition,” it is the slough of scientific materialism, to Barr, that holds the central figment of the modern imagination.
Daniel Matt, like Barr, attempts to cut down the debate at its root. He takes a more specialized approach in his book "God and the Big Bang," using the language of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, to articulate the details of the Big Bang and the expansion and formation of the cosmos. While Matt’s particular mode of exploration may not be as accessible as Barr’s, his objective is basically the same – to expose the fallacy inherent in forcing science and religion apart.
Krishna believed strongly in the importance of this point. "I believe dogmatic barriers to the acceptance of this position will gradually cease,” he wrote, “when the organic factors responsible for [spiritual] transformation are clearly demonstrated by the objective methods of science."
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To be sure, even those who derive meaning from the synthesis of ancient theological concepts with modern scientific ones will find many old questions yet unanswered. And of course, it raises new challenges as well. For example: at what point, if any, does the failure of science to support a spiritual concept become evidence for its inability to do so? Does acceptance that some spiritual wisdom can be confirmed by contemporary scientific means invalidate that which cannot? The latter question, in particular, highlights how slippery is the scientific slope for those who would go with God.
But these questions are contingent on the more basic issue of whether the scientific and the spiritual paradigms are truly incompatible in some fundamental way – whether their differences are indeed merely semantic or if they are, in fact, substantive.
“Physicists and theologians often contend that religion and science are two separate realms,” acknowledges Matt, “each valid within its domain and operating under its own set of rules.” To his mind, though, “…the question ‘How did the world come to be?’ is vital to both disciplines because it is such a fundamental human question.” Science and religion, as such, are constructed to facilitate our understanding of the reality in which we live. It is both foolish and vain to project our intellectual handicaps onto truth just because it lies beyond our grasp.
Most of all, doing so constitutes a colossal missed opportunity: "Religion and science are the two wings upon which man's intelligence can soar into the heights, with which the human soul can progress.” And as demonstrated by empirical aerodynamics, it takes two wings to fly.
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“If there is no brain function,” a friend of mine ponders, “how does one have an NDE, which requires consciousness?” Even in writing, the tension in his words is evident. This question represents decades of hard-fought personal beliefs hanging in the balance. The dissonance is a discomfiting reminder of the precariousness of our own meticulously constructed worldviews. “That,” he continues, “is where the sidewalk runs out on me.”
Indeed, this is the end of the road – for those who won’t accept anything less than empirical, peer-reviewable fact. Such a person stands at the proverbial sidewalk’s end, peering over, rapt despite – or perhaps because of – his helplessness, into the abyss. Eventually he is pushed off and, leaving behind his attachment to intellectual categories which reflect the truth like a smoke-filled hall of mirrors, he wonders no more.
But for those not content to gape passively over the edge, there is an alternative. A few feet after the drop the sidewalk resumes, stretching ahead over the horizon. The leap across guarantees nothing concrete – nothing readily identifiable, anyway. But it does offer, at least, the chance to pick up the trail and keep walking.
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