The Real Issue: Reconciling Science With Experience

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By Swami Kriyananda*

The real issue lies not between religion and science but between belief and experience. Both disciplines ought to be understood in the light of man’s search for permanent truths. Both, however — and to some extent surprisingly so — have relied too heavily on dogmas and dogmatism. In science, revolutionary scientific ideas are often laughed out of court by “the old guard” — to be accepted in time, however, after old dogmas have been replaced by new discoveries — becoming in their turn, of course, new scientific dogmas.

In one respect the difference between science and religion is noteworthy: Scientific circles have yet to form bodies of hoary elders whose self-appointed role is to dictate absolutely what shall and shall not be accepted as the right beliefs. The pressure of accepted opinion, however, is almost as strong in science as in religion, and acts with as much authority as any church.

Is Consciousness the Center of the Universe?

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Dr. Larry Dossey*

Unfortunately, proponents of an empathic science must endure the perennial charge from critics that they seek to denature science, destroy its objectivity, and hold it hostage to the emotional whims of sloppy investigators. What do philosophers such as Goethe, or psychologists such as Kohut and Maslow, know about doing science? The criticism can be vehement. When the French paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) proposed a teleological direction in evolutionary biology, he was attacked by his fellow countryman and Nobelist Jacques Monod, mentioned above. Monod seems to have had a hissy fit. He screeched, “For my part I am most of all struck by the intellectual spinelessness of this philosophy. In it I see more than anything else a systematic truckling, a willingness to conciliate at any price, to come to any compromise.”1 This was not exactly a memorable “Meet Mr. Wizard” moment in science, but is reminiscent of a statement by a scientist critical of parapsychology, who blathered, “This is the sort of thing I would not believe, even if it were true.”2

Is There a God or Is There Nothingness? New Scientific Paradigm

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By Robert Lanza, MD *

The answer to such deep questions has traditionally been the province of religion, which excels at it. Every thinking person knows an insuperable mystery lies at the final square of the game board. So when we run out of explanations and causes that precede the previous cause, we say “God did it.” In all directions, the current scientific paradigm leads to insoluble enigmas, to ideas that are ultimately irrational. But since World Wars I and II there has been an unprecedented burst of discovery. Although still unbalanced by this sudden growth, our worldview will soon catch up with the facts, and the old physico-chemical paradigm will be replaced with a new biologically-based one that can address some of the core questions asked in every religion.

Religion and Science: Finding Their Kindred Spirits

It could be better if science and religion could go together but it could not. They have their own ethic and limitations.
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