Spirituality in the Age of Science

Science looks for matter, not spirit

Methodological naturalismEg. Fishing net, Knowing

personality thru X-ray, Seeing color image on a black & white camera

What science can’t tell usOrigin ValuePurposeQuality

Origin

Nothing existed because of nothing – nothing exploded because of nothing and gave rise to everything

Origin

God is not the explanation for the unexplainable – he is the explanation for explanability

Purpose“The cornerstone of scientific method

is…the systematic denial that ‘true’ knowledge can be got at by interpreting phenomena in terms of final causes—that is to say, of ‘purpose.’”

- Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity

PurposeScience “fails in the face of all ultimate

questions” (Jaspers) and leaves “the problems of life…completely untouched” (Wittgenstein)

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Value Even the greatest forces and abilities don't seem to carry any clear instructions on how to use them. As an example, the great accumulation of understanding as to how the physical world behaves only convinces one that this behaviour has a kind of meaninglessness about it. The sciences do not directly teach good or bad. … ethical values lie outside the scientific realm. Noble Laureate Physicist Richard Feynman

ValueYou are right in speaking of the moral foundations of science, but you cannot turn round and speak of the scientific foundations of morality… Every attempt to reduce ethics to scientific formulae must fail - Albert Einstein

Quality“We cannot say that in experience one light has twice

the brightness of another. The terms in which we measure experience of a sound are not terms of experience. They are terms of the stimulus, the physical sound, or of the nervous or other bodily action concomitant with the experience.…The search…for a scale of equivalence between energy and mental experience arrives at none.”

- Nobel Laureate Neurophysiologist Sir Charles Sherrington, Man on His Nature

Everything inside you is not you

“Materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself.”

–Arthur Schopenhauer

Harmony

Science can make things better; spirituality can make people better

Negativity

Fear is not the problem – fear of what comes after fear is

Double role Makes us do wrongCastigates us for doing wrong

What’s inside us?Superficial desires generated by

corporate-controlled media Core desires according to our

material natureCore desires according to our

spiritual nature

Living with the mindDistance Determination Devotion