S C I E N C E    And    R E L I G I O N

VALUE TO THE KNOWLEDGE CIVILIZATION: Science tells us WHAT we can do.  Science develops new knowledge of how to cause change in the physical world.

LIMITATIONS:  Science can only understand what it can measure.

1.    Maturity.  Science is a mature human discipline, confident of its techniques and the reliability and repeatability of its results, and respectful of its limitations.

2.    WHAT SCIENCE CAN DO.  Measure independent and dependent variables, change the independent variables and measure the change in the dependent variables, tell a story of why the change occurs (scientific theory), which is consistent with other scientific knowledge in these circumstances (unless there is a paradigm change), design experiments, predict the results of the experiments from the theory, do the experiments, measure the results to see if they match the predictions from the theory.  If they do, and other scientists around the world get the same results, the theory is confirmed as a way to understand how to reliably cause change in these circumstances.  Knowledge is a description of how to cause change.  Science develops reliable new knowledge of how to cause change in the physical universe.  The geometry of existence and the knowledge unit, and the global knowledge base using a knowledge computer are examples of how this works.  They show what science can do in the knowledge civilization to create and use new knowledge, and to make mass creativity and commerce possible by billions of human creators and consumers and their machines in the global knowledge economy.

3.    SCIENCE'S LIMITATIONS.  Science has limitations and cannot tell us everything.  Scientific technique is based on measurement and mathematics.  Science can only talk about what it can measure.  In the 20th century, science learned, what philosophy had known for 2,500 years, that humans cannot prove anything completely to be true for certain.  Science cannot tell us all the answers to human questions for certain.  In physics, the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle showed that if you measure either the location or the momentum of a particle, you change the other by an unknown amount.  You need both to calculate where the particle will go, so you in principle cannot calculate accurately where the particle will go.  In mathematics Godel showed that in any system of mathematics, you can ask a question in that system, that cannot be answered in that system.  In order to answer it, you have to go to a larger system to answer the question.  Then you can ask a question in the larger system that it cannot answer.  It is an infinite regress. You never get all the answers in any system.  This is Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.  This double blow to certainty in science was foretold by Pyrho in philosophy, who showed that in order to prove something was absolutely true for certain, you would need a method of proof.  Then how would you know your method of proof was true and accurate for certain?  You would need another method to prove the certain truth of the first method, and on and on; again, infinite regress, and no possibility of complete certainty.  Science's humility was further reinforced by the wave-particle or wavicle dilemma, the different rules of physics for the macroworld we live in and the microworld of quantum physics.  Finally the whole system was called into question by the work of David Bohm, Bell's Theorem and the 1975 experiment by Alain Aspect in France confirming Bell's Theorem.  This line of discovery showed that the universe was somehow connected together in ways that particle physics theories said was impossible.  Bohm raised the possibility that the universe was somehow a whole, everything in it was connected together and the whole determined what the parts would be, instead of the other way around.

4.    SCIENCE LEAVES THE QUESTION OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD IN THE REALM OF UNMEASURABLE MYSTERY, BEYOND THE ABILITY OF SCIENCE TO MEASURE OR ANSWER.  The humbling of science from the search for absolute certainty in answering all human questions and the opening of the possibility of the universe being one connected whole, led science to reduce its role in service to humankind to doing what it could do so well, determining how to cause reliable change, and in that process describe what the universe is like.

5.    SCIENCE RECOGNIZES THE ROLE OF FAITH.  If science cannot answer all human questions about human life and all around us, how are humans to find such answers?  How do humans deal with the mystery?  How do humans know what to trust to decide how to live successfully?  The answer is faith.  Psychology recognizes faith as a positive life force.  Those with faith in a higher power by which they guide their lives live longer, heal better and are happier.  Anthropology sees the need for a belief system based on faith to organize a civilization.    Religion serves humanity, where science cannot.  Science serves humanity where religion cannot.  In the knowledge civilization, citizens benefit from a partnership between science and religion.  Each does its own work in its own way.  Both are needed for successful human life in the knowledge civilization.

6.    SCIENCE TELLS US WHAT WE CAN DO.  Science develops reliable methods with which we can cause change.  This is what it is possible for us to do to achieve our personal fulfillment as a whole person.  Of all of these, which ones should we do to live our fulfillment as a whole person?

7.    RELIGION TELLS US WHY WE SHOULD DO THIS AND NOT THAT.  We make the decisions.  Religion teaches us the attitudes and values with which to make decisions that lead to successful life.  There are right ways and wrong ways to live so that in the long run, you achieve your fulfillment as a whole person in your relationships with self, other people and all of existence, including the Divine Mystery, however you understand that.  The Divine Mystery may be understood as one God, many gods, no God, nature, or all of existence.  Different people relate to the Divine Mystery in different ways.  Whether you believe in a Personal God or the Impersonal Truth, you have a relationship with the Divine Mystery.  Science recognizes that this relationship is based on faith and ultimately is not subject to measurement or scientific determination.  A scientist can be a faithful member of an organized religion, a humanist , an Atheist, or agnostic, and still be a professional scientist, rigorously using scientific method to determine new ways to reliably cause change, and in so doing gain new understandings of how the universe is organized and works.
 

    Now in the global knowledge civilization it is possible for science and religion to operate out of a common world view.  Each does its work in its way, but rather than their world views being mutually exclusive, and giving humans a cultural schizophrenia, science and religion see existence in the same way.  Part of the conflict in the past has been over creation, what it says in the Bible and what scientific cosmology describes.  It has been the Bible with instantaneous creation in six days vs. the long slow process of creation by evolution over billions of years.
    Recently Biblical Creationists have given up on a particular time for creation.  Science has begun to look at the possibility, following the work of David Bohm and others, that at bottom reality is not unrelated particles that are meaningless to each other, but somehow all of the universe is connected together into a unified whole, which determines what the parts of the universe are like.  These two changes allow for the beginning of the process to establish the common world view for science and religion.

    The common world view is based on the understanding that God's process of creation is evolution, and that while God allows evolution to proceed according to the rules of the universe, God can and does, out of grace and love, sometimes intervene, does hear individual prayer for those who believe in a personal God, and does love each individual human, and will provide inner guidance to the individual who will listen and follow the guidance toward fulfilled life as a whole person, and sometimes intervenes to answer prayer.  It is not for us to know why God does or does not intervene in natural, evolutionary processes.  It is for us to worship the Divine, the Personal God or the Impersonal Truth, with thanksgiving for all of life that we have.  When one establishes a precious inner friendship with the Divine, and receives loving gifts, guidance and a better life, one reflects back some of the love that created the individual and the circumstances of life.  This mutually loving relationship with the Divine is inner friendship.  It is available to every scientist seeking to understand how to cause some new change with measurement and mathematics.

    Religion pursues a relationship with the Divine in this evolving world.  Religion is based on faith, not measurement and mathematics.  Faith is based on experience, the teaching of others and the sacred scriptures.  When one's faith leads to a better life or provides hope to go on in otherwise hopeless circumstances, the individual experiences the value of the religion.  It is real, and leads to real and valuable results.  In psychological terms, the success of a religion leads to an increase in its believability, a strengthening of faith.  Those who devote their lives to the guidance provided by their religion live better, more fulfilled lives as whole persons, according to science.  People who have experienced this do not need any other proof.  Their religion is real and valuable to them.

    Since religion is a matter of faith and experience in an environment, one religion cannot prove for certain that it is better than another religion, or the only true religion.  This too is a matter of faith.  Each religion in the knowledge civilization may believe that it is the one true religion.  That is the nature of some religions.  However, it can still live in peace and mutual respect with the faithful of other religions, believing that they have not seen the light yet, and that eventually the Divine Mystery will change their minds and hearts to the one true religion.  The secret to world peace is that each religion believes its way passionately, its faithful live their religion, and teach others and preach and evangelize their religion, and then stop, and let the Divine of their religion change people's hearts in the Divine's way and the Divine's time.  For more on this from the point of view inside one religion, see  L E T , A Path To World Peace For Christians

    The Divine in the form of the God of the Bible can be found in our understanding of the physics of the universe.  There is no need to have instantaneous creation by an intelligent creator, superior to natural evolution, to prove the existence of God, and the truth of Genesis - God's Word in the Bible.  God is bigger than that.  The mystery of the Divine is deeper than that.  If the universe is somehow all connected together into one whole, and any one part can be influenced by any other part, then the possibility of an active, loving , listening, communicating, guiding, personal God is back in physics.  Science does not know how it happens, but now no longer excludes the possibility, because at bottom reality is just unrelated particles.  There is more to the mystery of the universe than that.  It is a Divine Mystery.

    Genesis and modern cosmology are not in conflict, but tend to support each other.  If one accepts the creationists position that time is not a factor, then the sequence of events becomes important, rather how long each took.  When one looks at the sequence of events in Genesis and in the current understanding of the development of the universe and our local area of the universe, the comparison is quite close, striking and mutually reinforcing.  Even though the Genesis account was describing a three layer world view understandable at the time, the sequence of events is quite close to the account of modern cosmology.

    If you are interested in a comparison of the two click on Quantum Genesis.

    When science and religion operate out of a common world view, people lose their split existence.  The scientist no longer needs to hide or apologize for his faith in his religion, which serves him or her so well in the rest of life.  Religion is not seen as a repudiation of science, but a ratification of science and what science has obviously learned about how to reliably cause change.  The faithful Christian, for example, no longer needs to feel guilty about a secret belief in evolution, because that would weaken his or her faith or the faith of other Christians in the truth of the Bible. Faith in God is faith in the creator who creates by the process of evolution.

    Finally, when evolution is taken seriously as God's process, the Divine process of creation throughout the universe,
much new understanding is revealed.  The history of the universe can be seen as the steady growth of existence and complexity at higher and higher levels of organization, as though the universe is fulfilling its potential to exist.  What the Divine will do with this new existence is unknowable to us.  We only find ourselves participants in the Divine process of evolution.  Why the Divine uses evolution to create new existence is not knowable either.  We simply observe it as God's process of creation.  Why God intervenes for our benefit, when one understands that that is what has happened, we cannot know.  We can only experience it and love the one who so loves us.  Some of the answers to why bad things happen to people come from the operation of evolution from competition, predation and the constant testing of nature.  Yet human life is so complex, and human relationships so rich and varied, that simple theories such as Social Darwinism do not work to describe human behavior.  Evolution is far more subtle than that.  It seems we are to live fully as we evolved to live, as we were created to live.  That is the lesson from evolution as God's process of creation.  Every organism evolved to survive and thrive in certain environments.  In living fully as a whole person in your circumstances, you are doing what you were created to do by God's process.  That is the goal of your life on Earth, in the global knowledge civilization.