Science and Religion:
Spawning Industries | Introduction to Neoscience | About us | What is Neoscience | Publications | Home
Discussion on Science and Religion
Synthetic Solution To Answering Basic Questions
Outline of discussion:
- First Step Acknowlegement
- Basic Fears
- Violations of trust in use of science
- Violation of trust in practice of religion
- Dualistic elements
- What religion has given us
- What science has given us
- Synthesis
- Utilization of scientific methodology
- Soulution
As reluctant as we are to embrace these very issues, we stand at the threshold of a doorway from which there is no turning back. The survival and peaceful evolution of our species, our planet and the assurance of these afore mentioned rights, depend upon our disposition and choices in this matterWe understand that these areas of application are inextricably entwined with our most basic life questions is inescapable. The questions of: Who or what we are? What is the nature of our own consciousness? How do we know? What is reality? What is Mind? It is further understood that even these most basic questions are themselves inextricably intertwined is self-evident to those who have pursued them.
Perhaps never before in our recorded history have such questions carried such weight and such consequence as they do today. Daunting as it may seem, we have it within our ability to so embrace these very issues. When we give over our reluctance to our willingness, we can begin a new era in human history. Yet this will not be done without the acknowledgement of our most basic fears.
As a population we search for answers to these most fundamental of questions, but these questions are moral questions as well as scientific ones. Heretofore, there has not been a government body capable of answering these questions without abridging the long held and sacred separation of church and state. Yet it is a duty and a responsibility of a governing body to insure the rights of the people. That this insuring of these rights is a most basic function of government and its capacities is self-evident.
The answer to these questions lies at the core of our most spiritual and moral beliefs, which are pushed and pulled by the ever-changing capabilities of science and technology. Yet we are equally reluctant to adopt any one set of religious beliefs or scientific standards as an overriding guide for these decisions because with this comes the prejudicial and political influences of its representative body. This leaves us with the situation of an incapacitating stalemate, where answers can be provided but not adopted. If we were to allow such an adoption of any one group's moral and ethical values, it would seem to be a subjective and prejudicial action abridging the rights of those who do not share these views. In this instance neither action being acceptable, we are relegated, to the device of denial, where we may neglect the questions and issues altogether. Yet we are on the precipice of a choice point, compelled by outward events, of scientific and technological achievement, to make a large change in our approach to these issues to insure the safety and rights of the individual and the species. Denial in this instance is no longer an option.
Violations of trust in the use of science
The question arises where do we turn for the foundation stones of these rights? Do we turn solely to science with its cold and observed indifference to the human condition? Knowledge without wisdom has its price and is fairly evident in the world in which we live today. From this, our most basic of mistrust has arisen and rightly so. It has been the power of the individual and the corporate body to gain scientific insight at such a magnitude as to affect the whole of humankind, without regard to humankind or the individual soul, that has only added to the depth of our mistrust. It is upon the further development of technological advancement that has been driven by the machine of monetary gain, without respect or honor accorded to sentient and non-sentient life itself, that this mistrust has been more fully developed. This material objectification of human and animal kind has in turn given rise to the worst kind of pragmatism, materialism and its exclusion of the spiritual side of man, often truncating the spirit of humankind. These are but a few of our concerns.
Violations of trust in the use of religion
Do we turn solely to religious doctrine and the truths and wisdom of antiquity? Our fears here are many. It has been the tenets and prescriptive paths of religion, which have been distorted often in the hands of a few individuals, to the ends of controlling and manipulation of the masses, that has built mistrust. This practice has been carried out by the purveyors of religious doctrine to enslave the minds and hearts of men, in order to gain power over the many by the few. This strikes at the most basic of all freedoms of the individual and their collective masses. Beyond this we have often observed that our most sacred and honored of truths have been distorted to this end. This has in times, present and past, led many to disavow some of our most foundational and fundamental standards of existence, and rightly so. It has led many to question the efficacy of this wisdom even in its most pure form. It has often been these individuals that have shown us our lightest and our darkest roads. This freedom we should never fear, but instead always support, that free the mind is and so shall it remain. It was the initial abridgement of this freedom and the freedoms of acknowledgement of individual experience that brought us the death of so many of our promising souls, the martyrs of the past and present day. This has only served to build on the foundation of mistrust instead of the foundational truth of freedom.
An acknowledgement of dualistic elements
Humankind has been witness to numerous violations of the most basic of human rights as a result of these afore mentioned paths and practices. It is untenable that the two most trusted guides in our experience, science and religion, be trusted to take this next step in the evolution of the human species by themselves, because while they have served us thus far in our growth as a species, they have also served as the source of our greatest mistrust. Through acknowledgement of our most basic fears in relation to these two heretofore standards for truth and governance, we may begin to see the dualistic elements contained in our past and present day reality.
On one hand, religion and other philosophies (political and otherwise) have made numerous incursions on the boundaries of freedom of the individual and their collective masses. This has not been through indifference and objectification, but through subordination of thought, body, and heart of peoples everywhere. This has been done to the end of various spiritual or philosophical goals. A forced injunction, even if it is correct, strikes at the most basic of lessons, these very injunctions are trying to teach and these are freedom, choice, self-determination and self-emancipation.
Yet when we strip these injunctions of their inflicted metaphors, their subordinating practices and their political ends, when we look at the pure underlying truths which they present naked and distilled into their purest form, we find foundational, sublime, and beautiful standards of life. These truths have often been hammered out on the souls and lives of individual people, and through incredible individual efforts, and brought to us through the efforts of some of our greatest world teachers the likes of Jesus-Christ, Buddha, and Lao Tzu over the expanse of human time.
On the other hand it has been modern science, and technology with its cold indifference, that has made another kind of incursion on the fabric of freedom. It has often denied the human condition, the heart of the individual soul, and the process of life/death/rebirth by which the soul travels into and out of this life. Science has often denied the spirit and dignity of humankind and indeed this very journey itself. In this indifference we have been relegated to goals and objectives that only serve the spatial-temporal existence of the individual. Whether in repulsion from our mistrust of religion, or driven by the engine of profit, we in modern times have made this our god. Here we find the altar of objectification, lives and lifetimes being consumed on it. This practice has driven us to harness the minds and hearts of men, to pull the weighted wagon of materialism, enslaving whole populations to this one goal to the exclusion of all others. This is our most present and critical danger, it threatens to over-sweep the whole world in the name of comfort, glamour, fame, fortune, survival, and spatial - temporal power.
Yet when we look at this practice, the practice of science and the methodology it has given us -- of freedom of experimentation, of unfettered investigation, of theorizing and then re-testing -- we find this is a most profound methodological practice with proven utility, and of profound value. We find the very thing that has drawn us to the waiting arms of science and technological development to begin with, namely the championing of the values of freedom and unfettered investigation that have historically been so abused by non-scientific practices of the past. Herein, we find yet another pathway, the pathway of the scientific method, held together and described by the language of mathematics. This provides for both quantitative and qualitative, and non-prejudicial description and investigation.
The synthesis and transformation of practice
These afore mentioned conditions have been some of the many aspects of a somewhat dualistic reality embodied by our history and our present time. In order that we formulate a new pathway that insures our afore mentioned goals, we must acknowledge the best and worst of these elements.
In summary: It has been the use of religion that has inflicted a spiritual goal to the exclusion, often times of the very principles it is trying to teach, followed by the denial, often times, of the physical reality, of the spatial-temporal domain, and the free investigation thereof. In this we have seen the legacy of the bodies of dead men and women, covering the plains of history with their blood, shed in the encumbered pursuit of free investigation. In similar fashion the use of science and technology has inflicted a material goal to the exclusion often times of the spiritual side of humankind and the honoring of all life sentient and non-sentient. It has, often times, eschewed investigation of non-spatial-temporal domains, presenting any such investigation as unscientific, resurrecting fears of the past abuses of policies set by such an investigation.
Having recognized this most fundamental of dilemmas, we can utilize the process of science to investigate the objective world of inner experience as well. While at first glance this inner world seems more feeling and subjective than objective, this is not actually the case. The individual or the group given the appropriate set of injunctions or pre-conditions may observe consciousness at any level. By utilizing this methodology we may be confident that we will find truths and standards which are inclusive of religious principle and understanding from around the world. This understanding allows both to flourish by principle of inclusion verses exclusion, both being allowed to draw the best from one another.
The utilization of scientific methodology
It is the lack of prejudice in this scientific method and the generic application thereof, that will provide the groundwork for a willingness to emerge that embraces all sets of knowledge in their fullness and diversity. This is a more balanced picture which fully acknowledges the objectivity of the external world in the material realm (spatial-temporal domains), and the rich heritage that comes from the knowledge of humankind's internal reality (non-spatial-temporal domains). We should not trample upon the vehicles, metaphors and religious practices of the individual, but rather insure and celebrate their diversity, with which the world is so rich. Thus a new science is provided as a path and a vehicle to weave the coherent discussions of the future, discussions acknowledging fully the efficacy and truth derived from both external experience and observation and internal experience and observation. This singular approach preserves the rights of free investigation, expression, testing, and theorizing, and provides for these in both the spatial-temporal and non-spatial-temporal domains of consciousness. By adopting these understandings, heretofore set forth, free for any human soul to investigate and ascertain the certainty of their existence, we may allow freedom to rise. Acknowledging the battles of the past, fought so hard, and sacrificed so many on the altars of abrogated choice, while at the same time denying the rights of the individual to 'concept of self' and the 'rights of acknowledgement,' 'formation of a given reality' in thought or incorporeal, and the rights to 'free investigation' and knowledge, we may allow them to never again arise. It will be historically judged that these abrogations and incursions against the fabric of freedom have been far worse than any permission that might have been given to weave a new thread in this fabric.
The most basic concepts of Who am I? What is real? And How do we know? Are the key elements over which so many of our battles have been fought throughout history. They are the chisels, knives and razors which have torn at the fabric of our freedom, and created our pain. Yet alternatively, by utilizing these self-same implements we may hone, shape and mold the foundation of a new and peaceful world. For in this decision and this decision alone, rest our ability to form our hell or our heaven.
It is with this wisdom and the acknowledgement of it that we may derive an underlying standard for truth. From this synthesis we may utilize the best of both elements, science and wisdom as found in the world religions, while at the same time extinguishing the vices of both. By acknowledging the parallels in scientific and religious teachings and placing them side by side, we may create a non-prejudicial and generic environment for codifying basic understandings of life. In this course we must also understand that we do not abrogate the sacred, the reverent or the hallowed but rather that we breath new life into them, by providing a generic and non-prejudicial vehicle for free and unencumbered human experience. This is our step, today the theoretical physicist, the chaos theorist, and numerous others walk side beside on the road with the mystic. Thus, in providing for ourselves in this manner we can be assured of our most basic of rights.
Read More Here:
Declaration of Existential Rights
Spawning Industries | Introduction to Neoscience | About us | What is Neoscience | Publications | Home | Topics
All Rights Reserved copyright © 2009 Center For Neoscience
