religion and science

Blind faith – Science or religion?

Spiritual Questions & Answers

Discovering inner health and transformation

blind faithEmotions can run high in the debate between religion and science. Just take a look at  the high-profile campaign in the United States to teach ‘Intelligent Design’ in schools. But is conflict inevitable because both sides are showing blind faith in their own version of reality?

Blind faith of scientists who deny a purposive life source

Despite the victory of Darwinism over creationism, it is hard to see how adaption from something like a single cell through natural selection can give an account for the development of human self-reflection, courage, honesty, ethical insight, ideology, altruism, and resistance to temptation. This is not to deny the truth about the facts of nature that science can reveal. But should we not also acknowledge the deeper side of human life revealed inwardly to those of a spiritual bent. To my mind, human consciousness derives from the human soul absent in other forms of life.

Those who believe that the origin of human existence is a spiritual Life Source are aware however that science firmly favours Darwin’s evolutionary theory, which is based on natural selection and chance factors in reproduction. Survival of the fittest means all human beings together with all animal life have descended from some one primordial form. Science it seems has no room for spiritual ideas such as a purposeful human creation.

Blind faith of creationists

The Darwinian view has easily seen off the creationists, who to my mind have failed
to notice the allegorical nature of the Genesis story. By this I mean that the story of the beginning of the world and the Garden of Eden is not a physics and biology lesson but rather a psycho-spiritual one.

Some modern theologians see the first few chapters in Genesis as a symbolic representation of the origin and dynamic development of the human psyche and
its consciousness in relation to its Source; an ageless model of each of us created in the image and likeness of God. Thus arguably the Garden of Eden is a picture of the state of trust in and obedience to God and the fall of humanity into reliance on self-intelligence and self-orientation.

To my way of thinking the Bible as a whole, if inwardly understood, shows the spiritual journey of humanity returning to a state of innocence. We have a tree of life in the first book Genesis and in the last book Revelation, both I think representing the reality seen through the depths of one’s spirit.  Understanding about life

‘coming from a God-given rationality, structured yet full of vitality and dynamism.”
(Helen Brown Do spiritual symbols mean anything today?)

According to this view trust in the Source is not one based on ignorance but is one with rational understanding — no blind faith but rather a realistic perception about meaning and purpose that takes into account all our understanding about life as a whole.

More people these days are rejecting the blind faith of religion expressed in traditional superstitions and unreasonable dogmas. People are more likely to want their spiritual intuition to be confirmed by rational discussion. Only the creationist will assume scripture is always literally true. I am arguing that people want answers to life’s issues informed by scientific education and the reasoning of common sense, as well as by spiritual knowledge and insight.

When theological doctrines such as creationism are seen to lack realistic sense, then I guess religion will start to be side-lined by those who use their rational minds.

Blind faith in scientific theories limited by naturalistic assumptions

I notice that likewise some scientists claim that random processes created human
life rather than any creative design. Is this not because there can be no scientific instruments to observe purpose and meaning? And because science is limited by its assumption that knowledge is limited to natural things like fossils and genes? I can’t imagine how there might be any scientific proof that science is the only means of acquiring valid knowledge.

Likewise when scientific theoretical concepts appear unlinked to the results of research then even to scientists they will seem more like fantasy than reality.

I wonder if you would agree with the following statement? In its naturalistic explanations and focus on the question ‘how?’ science deals with the level of thinking of the external rational mind, whereas, religion, with its focus on meaning and the question ‘why?’, appeals to the inner rational mind.

In other words when rationally presented, perhaps both science and religion are useful for communicating  different aspects of human knowledge and understanding: science for the outer, time-related, natural life and religion for the inner timeless spiritual life.

Blind faith due to arrogance

Does trouble not arise when some theologians or some scientists believe they know it all? Religion got it wrong in the past about the earth being at the centre of the solar system and today creationists claim the world was made in seven days despite all the evidence of science to the contrary.

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” Galileo Galilei (1600–1670)

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

Scientists as much as religious people can fall into the trap of blind faith.

Copyright 2011 Stephen Russell-Lacy
Author of  Heart, Head & Hands  Swedenborg’s perspective on emotional problems

Inner well-being – Exploring Spiritual Questions

Posted on16th November 2011Authoreditor18CategoriesMeaning of life, Religion, ScienceTags, , , , , , , , , ,, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Science and religion

Science and religionBoth religion and science make truth claims about ultimate reality. For that reason there is growing interest among scientists, theologians, and laypeople to ask if science and religion can both answer the same questions about reality and have real points of interaction. I like to think of myself as part of this exciting and stimulating movement. I personally am coming to the last stages of completing the manuscript for my new book that hopefully will offer fresh ideas to this important discussion.

There are of course, landmines everywhere. For instance, in order to unify science and God one has to offer at least some rational evidence (if not empirical evidence) that God indeed exists. Next problem: what theological interpretation of religion and what scientific interpretation of quantum physics do you choose to unite? From my humble point of view, any successful encounter between the two would require that theology offer new insights to solving the perplexing issues of the New Physics, and that these solutions of science lead to a more rational approach to the deepest mysteries of faith. Since this has not happened I fully expect that an upheaval in both science and theology will be required. My book deals with this shake-up.

In the hopes of starting a dialog with open-minded and serious thinkers I would like to share with you reasons for my confidence that such a thing is possible. (Agnostics and atheists are more than welcome to participate.)

Before anyone pooh-poohs the existence of God, it is important to understand exactly where science is hitting a brick wall – its fundamental understanding of reality. Even science based on a strict materialistic philosophy is finding that nature, on her most fundamental level, is radically “weird” and resists a reductionist approach. In the invisible world of the quantum vacuum nothing physical or solid exists, there are only “tendencies to exist.” If God exists it will be in a non-local and non-temporal realm – exactly where science does not have a firm grasp on what is going on.

On the other side of the physics coin, relativity theory and the Big Bang Singularity presents us with another weird problem. Since the universe is expanding scientists assumed that if you turn time backwards the universe will shrink into an ever- decreasing radius and disappear into the void as a zero-dimensional point (essential singularity) where time and space no longer exist. Where there is no spacetime there are no physical laws either. So, if the laws of physics break down in a singularity than physics cannot explain the beginning of the universe.

Both quantum physics and the Big Bang point to a non-physical beginning (even though they do so in different ways). Therefore, the laws of physics must have their origin in an invisible, non-temporal and non-spatial realm. What non-material principles and agency made up the special initial conditions of the universe where time equaled zero (t = 0)?

It is the premise of my forthcoming book that the laws and forces of nature are actually spiritual laws and forces extended into the constraints of time and space. In other words, the various qualities of God’s Divine Love and Wisdom create all the ratios, proportions, and analogies we find in the extensiveness of the physical world.

Most physicists agree that Nature is unified. The essence of love is to unite and the essence of truth is to differentiate. Nature is the perfection of unity through difference. This is why Nature is a mirror image of God’s nature. What do you think?

Reprinted from TheGodGuy

Copyright 2008 Edward F. Sylvia  Read about his book Proving God

Does the brain fully explain consciousness?

brain fully explain consciousness
The increase in green fluorescence represents the imaging of local translation at synapses during long-term synaptic plasticity

According to neuroscience, the brain fully explain consciousness. Sensory impressions of what we see and hear cause electrical activity in the brain. There is evidence that when a new memory is formed, new proteins are made locally at the synapse — the connection between nerve cells — increasing the strength of the synaptic connection and reinforcing the memory. The journal Science reveals that neuroscientists have captured an image for the first time of this mechanism.

You may wonder that if memories are chemically and electrically stored in this way, does this mean that your brain is the be-all and end-all of your memory and that without your brain you would remember nothing after death? Is it true that the brain fully explains consciousness?

It would seem so. After all, many brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s can cause memory loss, as can brain injury.

Brain a necessary but insufficient cause?

And so the human mind is often explained away as nothing more than the workings of the brain. Neuroscientist, Raymond Tallis, believes that the brain is clearly necessary for our having memories. But he also wonders if it is a sufficient explanation of the experience of remembering. He points out that the brain is a mechanism but the content of memory is not entirely contained in the mechanism of electrical impulses going along nerve fibres. He feels we need a bit more and suggests what that bit more is, no scientist knows.

The spiritual thinker might point out that the redness of something remembered or its beauty cannot just be due to what happens in the activity of matter of the brain but has something to do with a consciousness of mind that transcends matter. The brain fully explain consciousness?  Well perhaps not after all.

Brain as detector or activator of mind?

Wilder Penfield was a brain surgeon. His patients frequently reported hearing hazy voices coming from some strange and unknown place when he stimulated the right temporal lobes of their exposed brains with a mild electric current. Elaborate recollections and other conscious experiences did occur at such times. However he went on to say these were either automatic, as in epileptic seizures, or felt to be caused by the surgeon’s probes.  He thus concluded that direct electrical stimulation of the brain never activated the person’s mind.

A. R. Lauria, neuropsychologist, has pointed out that, for many centuries, philosophers and other scholars supposed that the brain was a detector (rather than an activator) of mind, which itself was seen as an inner, subjective state of consciousness. Like many spiritual ideas such a theory is these days seen as not amenable to scientific proof.

Personal choice

In a noisy room full of people having separate conversations, we may likely want to attend only, or mainly, to one specific conversation — not always the one we are participating in — without being too distracted by others. We can do this by focusing on the distinctive quality and volume of one particular person’s voice, and where the sound is coming from.

Divided attention is possible but the principle is the same – i.e. unattended input is said to receive only minimal brain processing. In other words, our noticing something and reflecting on it, is necessary to fix some experience or fact into the patterns of memory. Without interest we remember less.

And so it can be argued that personal choice is relevant to what we attend and thus remember. Yet for the scientist, everything must be determined by some measurable entity: like what is seen or heard, the chemical state of one’s brain or one’s genetic makeup. No room here for the notions of intention and free will. No need to ask the question ‘Does the brain fully explain consciousness?’ It’s a no brainer!

Spiritual memory

What Emanuel Swedenborg calls interior memory, is said to differ from natural memory in that it has to do not with naturally seen objects or symbols, but with abstract ideas like honesty, goodness, integrity. When you are reminded of such spiritual concepts your thought can be raised out of the world of sense perception.

An important part of his philosophy is that what merely enters into the understanding does not affect one’s character but only that which one makes a part of the love of one’s life. We need, however, a memory of spiritual knowledge to draw on if our personal growth is to be confirmed, sustained and built up.

In the end your destiny is all about what was true in the way you inwardly responded to life rather than by the false external memories you erect for yourself to rationalise such intentions. Swedenborg claims that how we each actually lived is a fixed internal memory found in our individual book of life. Writing in the 18th century he said:

“Man has an external or natural memory, and an internal or spiritual memory. Upon this internal memory is inscribed everything in general and in particular that he has thought, spoken and done in the world from his will, and that so completely and particularly that no detail is lacking. This memory is man’s book of life, which is opened after death and according to which he is judged.” (Swedenborg E, Divine Providence 227)

Copyright 2013 Stephen Russell-Lacy
Author of  Heart, Head & Hands  Swedenborg’s perspective on emotional problems