Beyond the Compromise of Science and Religion

We can do better than that...

We are told that science and religion can coexist peacefully. There is, supposedly, no contradiction between the scientific worldview, evolution, and the belief in a Creator. One can be a scientist and still believe in God. Right?

The rationale is that these are two different domains of existence. Science and religion are like two windows through which we can look at the world. They reveal to us two aspects of Creation. Science tells us how things work, what cells and atoms are made of, how planets twirl around their stars, and how to build spaceships and computers, while religion gives us moral, ethical, and social values together with a sense of meaning and purpose.

As a matter of fact, science and religion do coexist. This is the compromise we accepted after the ages of the Inquisition, its witch hunts, dogmatism and superstition, and a philosophy of Nature that forgot its roots and became oblivious to the original spirit of the Greek philosophers, becoming unable to progress. The Age of Enlightenment, the separation of church and state, together with the industrial revolution, allowed humanity to frame a pact with these seemingly irreconcilable and opposite poles that, otherwise, most likely would have not led to the progress of science and technology.

While this political compromise was necessary to avoid a certain kind of religious and anti-scientific barbarism that Europe went through in the Middle Ages, and it allowed us to transition toward a more secular, democratic, and technologically ordered society, it is questionable if this separation represents anything having to do with reality. The coexistence between science and religion was a socio-political necessity, but it is far from obvious whether it makes sense from a philosophical and theological perspective. Intellectually speaking–that is, from a natural-philosophical point of view that would like to see Nature and all of reality as they are, and without being colored by a theist or atheist human belief systems–I never felt this dichotomy that sees science and religion as two entities which can coexist but that should never mix, as oil droplets in water, neither appealing nor logically coherent.

Let’s face it. Science, or at least the present materialistic and reductionist science, assumes that the universe is a purposeless, aimless, unconscious, and largely chilly and lifeless place. It tries its utmost in explaining everything starting from unconscious, goalless, and insentient particles that are exclusively ruled by differential equations. It sees the universe only as a gigantic clockwork that must be modeled with purely mechanistic principles. It assumes that there is no place and no need for anything that goes beyond pure materiality and a mechanistic concept of Nature. Metaphysical speculations and any non-physical entities are expunged a priori as unnecessary hypotheses. And, to a certain degree and in certain domains, it did so quite successfully. Science is a progressive discipline that could even shed some light on our inner psychological dimensions with neurophysiology, brain studies, and psychology, though only in a very limited and partial manner.

Whereas religion has no notion of progress and cannot claim to have been equally successful in explaining the world and, in my view, frankly, did not even contribute much to the general spiritual well-being. I know, this latter viewpoint is very controversial and can be contested, but my main question is this: If religion is truly based on the perception of an inner reality and wisdom, that has its source in a higher Being, why could it never contribute to the discovery of this Being also in the outer world?

Of course, God has to be discovered first and foremost inside of us. We can’t find Him outside of us by pure rational and scientific investigation if we haven’t discovered Him first in our souls. That makes sense. But I want to discover him inside and outside as well. Replying that religion’s domain is exclusively that of faith, sounds to me only like an excuse that tries to hide the fact that it failed on several fronts. If God exists it must, in one way or another, be also visible and perceptible in the makings of the universe, from the Big Bang onwards.

So, you might now reply that this is the typical line of reasoning of the materialist and atheists who brand religion as the ‘God delusion.’ But this is not at all my viewpoint.  I think the atheist has fallen into the very same binary thinking of the religious mind, only coming from the opposite path. While religion has given up the search for God outside us and has given way too much space to material sciences, atheism has given up the search for something beyond matter inside of us, branding this as a waste of time or illusion. In between is the agnostic who doesn’t frame strong opinions, or simply doesn’t care. But all convened that, therefore, it is much better not to touch these issues and keep religion and science as both acceptable but separate phenomena of the human experience. The majority believes that both are compatible, but must be kept separate.

Can we go beyond this binary thinking? Perhaps other options are also possible. Is there a third position possible?

I believe that one of the problems resides in the fact that we are still stuck in religion, faith, scriptures, and dogmas that are mostly human-made intellectual constructs but are much less willing to embrace a religion-free and faith-free spirituality that investigates the inner realms with the same discernment as science does with the outer world. Because one thing is a religion based on faith, another is a spiritual attitude, that aims at transcending our present state of consciousness and experiences both the inner and outer domains of existence. The same is true for science. Modern science sticks, dogmatically as well, in trying to naturalize everything and is almost obsessed with eliminating any teleology and spirituality in Nature from the outset.

Therefore, I say: No, science as it is, and religion as it is, aren’t compatible. If there is some truth in religion, it must be discovered with a spirituality that transcends religion. And science must be transcended as well. Trying to defend them as complementary, but separate is only the reflex of a desire for appeasement, not a genuine desire for true knowledge.

I believe–or, I should say more appropriately, that I feel, perceive, and intuit–how this cosmos is governed by a cosmic consciousness, a divine Presence an inherent Wisdom, which works behind the veil of the mechanistic appearances. I intimately know that there is much more than meets the eye, our senses, and, especially, our analytic reason. The workings of His hands are for me not a hypothesis, a speculation, or a mere belief, but a very concrete and almost self-evident fact. I don’t know that because of religion but rather despite religion.

Thus, atheism isn’t an option either. Naturalism has led us to great achievements, but it fails on many fronts as well. It has made no progress in trying to answer questions on consciousness, the nature of life and mind, and so many existential questions that religion supposedly should have answered, but didn’t.

Let me rephrase the same idea from a different perspective. Suppose that, indeed, behind the appearances of this material Nature, there is a Spirit, a Mind at large, a Divine, a God, or however we might call it, and that works by purpose and design. Or, to put it in yet other terms, suppose that an unexpected and until then incredible discovery reveals to us that, indeed, this universe is the expression of a higher Consciousness and Will. The question, then, is: Would we still perceive this strict separation between science and religion/spirituality as a justified and reasonable attitude? If scientists knew for certain that all is a superficial appearance of a universal consciousness, would they still look upon the world with the same ‘eyes’, seeing in it only a mechanical, unconscious, and purposeless reality? I think that anyone who feels and intimately knows how this universe is the expression of a universal consciousness, must either go beyond this illusionary agreement between science and religion, or must repress one’s natural desire to develop a different way of seeing Nature and, finally, bow down to the dominant naturalistic and religious ideology.

I believe this compromise between science, politics, and religion was only a necessary temporary arrangement that helped us to avoid further bloodshed and social turmoil. But it came to a price: It forced us to shut down for centuries any further thought to anything that could possibly allow us to see beyond the superficial appearances.

It is time to transcend this dichotomy and look for more advanced approaches that could lead us further.