The long history between the Roman Catholic Church and science includes many tragedies. Among the greatest was Galileo’ conviction on charges of heresy. On the up side, the modern church has apologized to Galileo, and confirmed that the teaching of evolution is not heresy. Here’s an article about one of the church’s recent efforts to promote science – in Galileo’s home town of Pisa.
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This short article by Paul Wallace in the Huff Post Religion section is notable for two reasons. First it outlines how science facilitates spirituality by creating a sense of wonder and awe. Second he refers to and describes the work of Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive psychologist (one of my clan) who has been investigating resistance to science education in the spiritual community. Check it out.
My philosophy of science describes the objective/subjective divide – the world’s division into domains where the scientific method does and does not apply. The source of this divide is our subjective experience’s impenetrability to other observers, which foils the fundamental requirement of science that the objects of scientific discovery be replicable by others. However, the philosophy I’ve set out does not imply that the subjective world and the objective are separate, or follow different laws. Indeed there must be an identity between the two, like between a map and its territory, and those for whom that identity is lacking are insane. Rather the objective/subjective divide is a limitation to the methods we use to explore different aspects of the world – science for the objects of the world and something else for our own minds. For me that something else is the ancient system of spirituality called Kabbalah. One of the really amazing things about Kabbalah is that the writings are filled with amazingly astute observations and predictions about the physical world. While these observations don’t formally prove that Kabbalah or spirituality is the “right” way to explore one’s own subjective experience, they do demonstrate a lack of hostility towards physicality on the part of the Kabbalists and a keenness of their perception. One such observation that helped me connect to Kabbalah is the kabbalistic interpretation of the meaning and function of time.
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This is the third and final part of a series of posts describing my personal experiences that led ultimately to SoulLaboratory.com. The first part described my spiritual experiences up to college, and the second part described my parallel, and largely separate experiences as a developing scientist. Reading those two posts might give you the idea that I was a bit of a split-personality – living one life, but with two world views, separate and equal. That’s largely true, but conceals a crucial point. At no point in my life did my spiritual and scientific views conflict. However, that is not to say that they were reconciled. My worlds were implicitly at peace. That, however, was the result of compartmentalization and separate contexts. In other worlds, when I was studying and engaging in academics I was a happy scientist. At other times, and in other places, I was a budding spiritual being. It wasn’t until later in my life that I began the process of living in both worlds at the same time – a much more complex intellectual and spiritual endeavor because the potential conflicts were then relevant.
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SoulLaboratory.com promotes a positive view science and spirituality, as well as their peaceful coexistence and mutual relations. Science and Religion Today is one a very few sites that has a similar agenda and a fully professional presentation. The site features interesting articles related to science and religion, and maintains a very interesting list of links for you to explore.
All the best,
B.
