Over the weekend, I read an article about the inevitable conflict between science and religion. Speaking as a minority of one, such conflict does not and cannot exist.
Science by definition is “true knowledge,” and true (perfect) knowledge is divine. All knowledge relates us to the infinite through understanding. The antaganism is man made. Similarly there is no conflict between spirit and matter. We find in matter the manifestation of the spirit. These man made conflicts are what we are called to overcome.
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About the author
Webb Hubbell is the former Associate Attorney General of The United States. His novels, When Men Betray, Ginger Snaps, A Game of Inches, The Eighteenth Green, and The East End are published by Beaufort Books and are available online or at your local bookstore. When Men Betray won one of the IndieFab awards for best novel in 2014. Ginger Snaps and The Eighteenth Green won the IPPY Awards Gold Medal for best suspense/thriller. His latest, “Light of Day” will be on the bookstands soon.
This is a very interesting idea to me, the thought about conflict between religion and science. There has, of course, been conflict down through the centuries. Copernicus’ and Galileo’s regarding heliocentricity resulted in some religious persecution. The age of the earth as determined by carbon dating is disputed by some religions who hold to a belief, based on their reading of Genesis, that the earth is only a little over 6,000 years old. Another, more subtle conflict exists between those who believe that science will one day provide the answers to all of the universe’s mysteries, and those -many who are of religious perspectives – who believe otherwise.
I’m more of your perspective, Webb. While I am not a Sufi (at least formally), and Sufism is not a religion, I am impressed by the framework of the Chisti lineage which holds that the framework for belief is art, science and spirituality. And with the new ideas and theories that are being generated these days – especially within the field of quantum physics – it is difficult to NOT see the connection between God and science.
Your friend
Tom
Webb,
My son Gabriel and I were talking about this the other night. The readings from last week went against the laws of reason, according to this 10 year old. I asked him how miraculous it was that he started out as a tiny seed , grew in my belly and is now almost as big as me. Sort of goes against reason, and yet… He finally said, ” I guess it’s not science vs. God, but science and god. How do they fit together.”. Thanks for your posts.
Love,
Elizabeth
My son Will once told me “If you believe in God, and you believe God is the most powerful thing in the universe, then I think its easy to believe in everything else.”
The ‘assumption’ that there is no conflict between ‘spirit and matter’ is an assumption about to be tested. For what science and religion, not to mention the rest of us, thought impossible has now happened. History has its first literal, testable and fully demonstrable proof for faith.
The first wholly new interpretation for two thousand years of the moral teachings of Christ is published on the web. Radically different from anything else we know of from history, this new teaching is predicated upon a precise, predefined and predictable experience and called ‘the first Resurrection’ in the sense that the Resurrection of Jesus was intended to demonstrate Gods’ willingness to real Himself and intervene directly into the natural world for those obedient to His will, paving the way for access, by faith, to the power of divine transcendence and ultimate proof!
Thus ‘faith’ becomes an act of trust in action, to search and discover this direct individual intervention into the natural world by omnipotent power that confirms divine will, law, command and covenant, which at the same time, realigns our moral compass with the Divine, “correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries.” So like it or no, a new religious teaching, testable by faith, meeting all Enlightenment criteria of evidence based causation and definitive proof now exists. Nothing short of an intellectual, moral and religious revolution is getting under way. To test or not to test, that is the question? More info at http://www.energon.org.uk,
http://soulgineering.com/2011/05/22/the-final-freedoms/