Recently, a long-time friend and professional colleague sent me an interview with an anthropologist who had gone to my university (before my time) and had become famous within our small circle with his ideas about the evolution of state societies. What I found immediately distracting was his insistence on telling the interviewer that he never had a religious background or any spiritual inclinations - and was proud of it. Just the facts, ma'am. One must first understand that he was reacting to the extreme cultural relativism that has taken over the discipline and, in many, many ways led it to irrelevancy. In this I agree. But to throw the baby out with the bathwater as he did is almost unconscionable. Why when was it seen as necessary?
On occasion I have taken such a view to task and been challenged by a frequent contributor to this site, Cal Roeker, leaving me with the impression that perhaps I should write a small apology of sorts. To disagree with the pure knowledge that science brings would be incorrect, and its contributions to our well being is well-known. Many, if not most, of us living today would not be alive where it not for modern science (I certainly wouldn't; my mother would have died without a Caesarian section with my older sister, and that would have been that). That being said, the reader should understand my criticism of such science - minded individuals as above. They seem insulted by the ignorance of the spiritually inclined, as if only their hard-empirical approach is relevant to knowledge. This, I have found, is the perception of the culturally dominant class of our society, leaving the rest of us behind as if we were ignorant rubes - and somehow bigoted - rednecks.
This is strange indeed. As everyone knows, the greatest scientific mind of our age, Albert Einstein, was deeply spiritual and he made no bones about it. He was, as were so many great scientists and mathematicians before him, trying to decipher the mind of God. Their work was their spiritual quest. As my colleague pointed out, Newton, Galileo (even though he was punished by the Church. Spirituality and dogma all too often collide), Michael Faraday, and even the much maligned (by fundamentalists) Charles Darwin were spiritual people. In fact, it is from the depth of the unknown that the great ideas arise. The ones who are ready for them - those who have studied the problem well - are those who are known for them, but that they arise without conscious effort in well known. Even Crick of Watson and Crick fame (who first recognized the DNA spiral) - a vociferous atheist - claimed that the picture of the DNA molecule came to him in a dream as a coiled snaked (more or less the caduceus, the twined snakes that represented knowledge to the ancient Greeks and is now the symbol for medical doctors).
We have confronted this conflict before and will undoubtedly do so again. Here I would like to add this: to me, the whole war of religion vs science is almost absurd. They both speak in specialized languages about the nature of the world, one in the language of myth and metaphor (necessary for its target of discussion), and the other in materialistic and mathematical terms. What the last author discussed on these pages (Cynthia Bourgeault) left no doubt about, was that spirit - the breath of God, if you will - is in everything. Science usually discusses the particulars of this, and religion the general, but they all lead to the same source necessarily. So it is not surprising that most of our greatest scientific thinkers were spiritual people, for those who wish to know down to the core often find evidence of that core, which is divine spirit. And even those who resist the idea come across the "strange," what cannot be adequately explained in their militantly limited world view. There should be no clash. Much of what has been brought to this blog has shown how certain sectors of modern science are realizing this and utilizing it (non-locality, information and spirit merging).
And so it ends with Bourgeault as well, in her book, "The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three" - a reconciliation of science and religion. This, however, is put in the context of our New Becoming, again a hopeful and fantastic vision of our intended (and perhaps inevitable) future. We will hopefully turn to that for the next blog. FK
On occasion I have taken such a view to task and been challenged by a frequent contributor to this site, Cal Roeker, leaving me with the impression that perhaps I should write a small apology of sorts. To disagree with the pure knowledge that science brings would be incorrect, and its contributions to our well being is well-known. Many, if not most, of us living today would not be alive where it not for modern science (I certainly wouldn't; my mother would have died without a Caesarian section with my older sister, and that would have been that). That being said, the reader should understand my criticism of such science - minded individuals as above. They seem insulted by the ignorance of the spiritually inclined, as if only their hard-empirical approach is relevant to knowledge. This, I have found, is the perception of the culturally dominant class of our society, leaving the rest of us behind as if we were ignorant rubes - and somehow bigoted - rednecks.
This is strange indeed. As everyone knows, the greatest scientific mind of our age, Albert Einstein, was deeply spiritual and he made no bones about it. He was, as were so many great scientists and mathematicians before him, trying to decipher the mind of God. Their work was their spiritual quest. As my colleague pointed out, Newton, Galileo (even though he was punished by the Church. Spirituality and dogma all too often collide), Michael Faraday, and even the much maligned (by fundamentalists) Charles Darwin were spiritual people. In fact, it is from the depth of the unknown that the great ideas arise. The ones who are ready for them - those who have studied the problem well - are those who are known for them, but that they arise without conscious effort in well known. Even Crick of Watson and Crick fame (who first recognized the DNA spiral) - a vociferous atheist - claimed that the picture of the DNA molecule came to him in a dream as a coiled snaked (more or less the caduceus, the twined snakes that represented knowledge to the ancient Greeks and is now the symbol for medical doctors).
We have confronted this conflict before and will undoubtedly do so again. Here I would like to add this: to me, the whole war of religion vs science is almost absurd. They both speak in specialized languages about the nature of the world, one in the language of myth and metaphor (necessary for its target of discussion), and the other in materialistic and mathematical terms. What the last author discussed on these pages (Cynthia Bourgeault) left no doubt about, was that spirit - the breath of God, if you will - is in everything. Science usually discusses the particulars of this, and religion the general, but they all lead to the same source necessarily. So it is not surprising that most of our greatest scientific thinkers were spiritual people, for those who wish to know down to the core often find evidence of that core, which is divine spirit. And even those who resist the idea come across the "strange," what cannot be adequately explained in their militantly limited world view. There should be no clash. Much of what has been brought to this blog has shown how certain sectors of modern science are realizing this and utilizing it (non-locality, information and spirit merging).
And so it ends with Bourgeault as well, in her book, "The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three" - a reconciliation of science and religion. This, however, is put in the context of our New Becoming, again a hopeful and fantastic vision of our intended (and perhaps inevitable) future. We will hopefully turn to that for the next blog. FK
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