Friday, March 11, 2011

Science Vs Religion - are we missing the mark?






What are both the fields of Science and Theology primarily concerned with? Do they really need to consider each other as mortal enemies in order to reach their goals? and where have their paths deviated to? In order to begin to answer these questions I refer to an excerpt from Bertrand Russell's essay "Mysticism - Religion and Science" (Oxford University Press, 1961).
"...Dean Inge is more explicit: "The proof of religion, then, is experimental." [He has been speaking of the testimony of the mystics.] "It is a progressive knowledge of God under the three attributes by which He has revealed Himself to mankind - what are sometimes called the absolute or eternal values - Goodness or Love, Truth, and Beauty. If that is all, you will say, there is no reason why religion should come into conflict with natural science at all. One deals with facts, the other with values. Granting that both are real, they are on different planes. This is not quite true. We have seen science poaching upon ethics, poetry, and what not. Religion cannot help poaching either." That is to say, religion must make assertions about what is, and not only about what ought to be. This opinion, avowed by Dean Inge, is implicit in the words of Sir J. Arthur Thomson and Dr. Malinowski;
Sir J. Arthur Thomson - "Science as science never asks the question Why? That is to say, it never inquires into the meaning, or significance, or purpose of this manifold Being, Becoming, and Having Been." And he continues; "Thus science does not pretend to be a bedrock of truth." "Science," he tells us, "cannot apply its methods to the mystical and spiritual." 
Professor J. S. Haldane - "it is only within ourselves, in our active ideals of truth, right, charity, and beauty, and consequent fellowship with others, that we find the revelation of God." 
Dr. Malinowski - "religious revelation is an experience which, as a matter of principle, lies beyond the domain of science." 
Through Russell's extract we see his view that science is predominantly concerned with the the question of "What", obsessed with explaining the facts, deducting, rationalising and platonifying our everyday existence. While Religion appears concerned with the "Why" of 'Divine' values and ethics. Ironically in attempting to tell us where we have come from and where we are going, modern Religion seems to have lost its grounding in day to day reality. Similarly science's preoccupation with the facts of existence has neglected many of the simple underlying joys of life itself. I agree with Russell's stance and believe that Conventional Religion needs to return to its roots and should be concerned with the unitive vision of the Personal Soul with the (seemingly) Transpersonal Spirit in the moment to moment experience of life. In essence moving beyond these theories of judgement into the realm of concrete reality, into a place of paradox where we honour both contradictory notions, then and only then is there the possibility of living in truthful awareness.














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