On the Limits

On the limits of scientific inquiry and religious dogma

The debates rage: atheists versus deists, evolution versus creationism, Christianity versus Islam, East versus West.

If we examine more closely why we identify in these broad categories, perhaps much of the conflict would dissipate. I say this in the awareness that in many areas scientists are peering into these connections, and many who take religion seriously take science seriously as well. What I address is how many of us in society identify and divide ourselves into these broad categories, without deeper examination or further exploration, unconsciously falling into the trap of tribalist stereotyping.

The scientific method is a process of verification to test our proposed knowledge base against the phenomenal world. The body of thought based on accumulated verifiable knowledge becomes the lens through which we perceive reality.

For many it becomes synonymous with reality. This, however, cannot be factually the case, for unless our scientific understanding is always a subset of all knowledge, no new understanding would be possible.

When pressed every scientist will acknowledge this, yet at the same time most believe their knowledge base and approach to reality superior to that of the non-scientific types. Having made this decision, they protect this belief from challenge, as though the adoption of their method of investigation made them automatically in possession of all the facts.

Those who adhere, from tradition or personal experience, to one or another set of descriptions of reality encompassing a belief in god, may be doing so without the realization that in defining god one places one’s understanding above that which they proclaim is infinite. If one’s definition of god is as all powerful, all knowing, omnipresent (as it is in the religious traditions I am familiar with), one can see the difficulty in attempting to place one’s understanding above such a god.

Both those who choose to view reality through the tools of science and those who prefer religious dogma can conclude in their enthusiasm that they know pretty much everything they need to know. It is when we behave according to this belief that we start to have major problems with reality, for it is reality that we are constantly in the process of experiencing, with greater or lesser understanding.

Speaking anthropomorphically for a moment, reality constantly responds to actions based upon inaccurate perceptions of it with consequences that make plain the limits of our understanding. Religion may maintain this is by design, science by default.

This argument, between religion and science, seemingly vast, is really a red herring. It matters little how we define it, since, if we were true to our method in either case, we would be humbled to acknowledge how little we do know.

Let us entertain for a moment, requiring a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief perhaps, the idea that all people are equal in intelligence and morality, but base their actions on a separate knowledge set, based upon separate sets of experience.

Much of the Christian Creationists’ creed is demonstrably false scientifically at this point, so they must close themselves off from the possibility of the full experience of reality in the present, in order to resist scientific understanding that conflicts with their religious dogma. Perhaps those who support interpretations of reality based upon religious dogma do so because they find within religious dogma explanations of unverifiable experience for which science offers no possible explanation.

Similarly, those who extrapolate scientific knowledge to exclude the possibility of an human conscious connection with the totality of existence, i.e. that the universe itself is ‘conscious’ in some way and this can be experienced individually, preclude from themselves the use of the most perfect instrument for an exploration of such a possibility; their own being.

This may be out of fear that any experience thus derived would be unverifiable, leaving them in an uncomfortable position vis-à-vis their peers. Their inability to acknowledge the potential validity of personal experience many describe as religious locks them in to acknowledging only that experience revealed to them through their five physical senses (as extended through science and mathematics), leaving unexamined much of the stuff of life that makes it interesting. They resist acknowledging publicly any experience that could be interpreted to reflect the interconnection of individuals to each other and the universe, in a direct systemic or energetic sense, for fear of not being taken seriously by their peers. This leaves them in a difficult situation when it comes to describing their own consciousness, and how it may relate to the whole.

The smell of a rose, the feeling of catching a wave, affection for a loved one, these may all be able to be described by examining biochemistry and physics, but these descriptions bear as much relation to the experience as telling a person who has never experienced sight that the sunset is beautiful because of the way the pink and orange clouds blend together. If this is the case with a simple sensory experience, what then of an experience of appreciation that transcends the physical senses?

The qualitative difference between the human experience and the scientific description of it is an area little examined by science but one consistently exploited by politics. Larry Beinhart in conversation with Suzy Weissman (Beneath the Surface, KPFK, Monday 9/22/’08) compared religion to alcohol; enjoyable, but if you overindulge, to drink and drive or zeal and fly would cause problems. I would add, the results of science can be useful, but when drunk on your method you’ll indulge in actions that will come back to slap you in the face (atom bombs, nuclear waste, DU et al pollution, cancer, global warming, terrorism, to name a few).

We might all benefit from allowing ourselves time for undifferentiated perception, that is, the luxury to observe life (starting with our own) without bowing to the pressure to define it in some way. The results might be hard to quantify and define, but real none-the-less, effectively altering our perception of ourselves, each other, and our place in the world.

In this way we open ourselves up to investigate the arena of experience that is both beyond our scientific ability to quantify, and beyond the limits of dogma to define.