Are science and religion one?

Hello

I'd like to start off by saying that this is my very first post (yay!) and I hope i picked the appropriate place for it.

I have a theory, no, more of a feeling that science and religion/spirituality are in fact one in the same. Two sides of the same coin.

For example: In some spiritual beliefs, it is said that we are all "one" we are all "connected." However in science it is known that we really are one. We are all made of the same stuff. The same materials that are in our bodies right now were formed in stars billions of years ago. According to science we also are "connected." We all have a common ancestor (as per Darwin) that we are connected to by our DNA.

If you look at death, or specifically what happens to us when we die, our bodies decompose and break down. Now if, say, an animal were to eat someone, that persons... material would literally become a part of the animal that ate it. So if the matter we are made of is interchangeable (essentially) then how is it that we have such a strong connection to ourselves? The bodies we inhabit now are not the bodies we were born with. The cells are constantly being replaced. How does knowledge get passed from one to another?

Religion says we all have souls, a sort of "life essence" within us all. (However psychology doesn't think of us as having souls rather referring to the phenomenon of self-awareness as our contentiousness, to me they are the same thing) Now look at the first law of thermodynamics which says that both matter and energy can neither be destroyed nor created, only transformed.

So its possible that if our "soul" really is a form of energy then after we die it has to go somewhere. Basically proving a form of life after death. Our contentiousness being a sort of soul which is made up a yet unknown energy... maybe?

Keep in mind I'm a very skeptical person and most skeptics side with science because it offers proof of what we don't know. Religion asks us to believe in what we don't know.

To me it's all like Yin and Yang. Science looks at the same problems as Religion just from different points of view. One is Yin, and the other, Yang.



What's your take on all this? Sorry if it sounds erratic and random I was kinda sleepy when i wrote it

I'd like to end with a quote from my favorite band Tool from their song "Parabola"

"This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality, embrace this moment, remember, we are eternal, all this pain is an illusion"

[edit on 14-8-2008 by the13thdeceptionist]

I agree that spirituality can be used in corroboration with science or that science can be used to explain certain things that at the moment are dismissed as mass-hallucination/chance/nonsense. The thing is that the only thing that is holding us back in all aspects of religion, science and some parts of spirituality is dogma.

'this cannot be because the bible says it!' 'this is a preposterous idea! because that theory says it cannot be' etc etc. The holy books stands in the way of progress science-wise, 'LAWS of physic' stands in the way of progress because even the LAWS are theories and science is pretty stubborn when it comes to new radical ideas that kick the old paradigm down so it goes slowly.

personal ego and dogma's have to go out of the window before we can go foward in such a speed and with agility that is needed to make some radical headway.

Research Nassim Haramein, he is pretty much a good combination of a spiritually inclined scientific person that has some radical ideas because of his embrace of both sides of the coin. The old alchemists did the same.

In higher levels of spiritualisim it's easy to understand the faith topics through science. However there is very little higher spiritualisim on this planet now, and about non of the "highest spiritualisim" here on this planet has anything to do with those blind fools that fill up the confuseness darkened religions.

reply to post by Incarnated


Can we get you to define spiritualisim please. Just so we are all on the same page here.

thanks

-fm

reply to post by the13thdeceptionist


I view science as a means of explaining God's works, and religion to understand them.

What we call science can take many forms. Math can also be considered as part of religion, since every major religion has numbers playing a significant role. Math, Science, and Religion are all tools we have to identify our consciousness.

science and religion are around for the same reasons: to explain that which was not known and is still not known, to make sense of the world around us, to find meaning in life on a personal and global level.

most religions use faith that is based out of a holy [or carnal depending on POV] text to define reality and explain one's purpose for life. god is responsible for everything, the concepts of this world were derived from him/her/it. religion acknowledges science but if the two come into conflict, the religious will hold till their own, denying or discrediting the scientific conclusion. religion is typically static, never adapting or changing over the years.

science uses logic, reasoning, experimentation, technology, and the world around us to explain life and all that accompanies it. science makes use of each individual's theories and works to come to cohesive conclusions. science relies on humanity and humanity's growing knowledge of the world and universe we are a part of, and this makes it very much alive and dynamic.


for me, i can't but be attracted to science more than religion, this stemming from my ever-growing research into the human brain, the mind, and consciousness, where there are no limits or boundaries set.

i find the factual ignorance of religions a shameful thing to embrace and to be content with, for to be stagnant and stuck on the same beliefs based on a contextually limited perspective of the world 2000 years ago, seems a disservice to the potential all humanity has to progress forward.

we humans are not as helpless as most western religion makes us feel. science has limitations only insofar as the limited understanding that we are expanding every day.

[to expand on that, if i gravitate towards religion it would be to the eastern beliefs that seem to have understood the importance of the mind and the unlimited potential of the individual].

[i do not think i would be alone in that sentiment for a lot of the "new agey" beliefs right now stem from current science and past mysticism].

[maybe this is where the truth lies]

*edited for more thoughts.

[edit on 14-8-2008 by banyan]

reply to post by funky monk


indeed you can

i used that term rather loosely i guess. spiritualism is just a general sense that there is more to a person that meets the eye. no one religious affiliation.

in my opinion religion is what happens to spiritualism when too many people get involved and start messing things up and turning it into a dogma.

i totally think science and religion are one. i always had problems (from childhood on) to believe in religion, because it just left too many questions. but i also had a problem to understand people who told me " there is no God, everything that exists has logical natural reasons". especially as a child i could have gone crazy because i didnt understand who created `nature` then.
at some point i realized, that there can be no better proof of god or spirituality or however you want to call it than scientific development. the more science can explain, the more we see how unbelievable perfect and complex nature, universe etc is and the more we actually have to realize, that there must be something higher.

reply to post by the13thdeceptionist


Thanks for that explanation there .
So in essence spiritualism is all about the part of people in relation to metaphysics. Spiritualism is exploring the area of people that cant be explained by anything physical yet it still might have a effect on the physical world around them.
Science IMO is the study of the physical world around us. Explaining that through verious means and offering logical explanation for the things that occour.

I reckon science and religion should be classed as one yet should be kept seperate to some extent. It might be more efffective to combine the two sometimes to help develop theories on certain subjects and I think both areas would benefit a lot from working together.

lol please correct me if Im wrong about anything here nods*.

-fm

No they are not the same, yet they have lot in common. In my opinion, the most distinguishing factor between religion and science is that the science aims in recovering the truth, yet religion claims to posess it already. In religion, there is a single way to explain cosmology, in science there are plenty, even though certain ones are more widely accepted.

So, science and religion both operate with the concept of truth, but their approach is different; while science quite widely agrees that there is such a thing as truth, religion regards itself as a truth when science on the contrary denies having the complete truth, but only shards of it.

Science on the other hand disregards everything that cannot be measured, weighted and labeled; they don't accept intuition which again is a fundamental property of religion. I guess induction can be referred as the closest equivalent of religious intution in science. By inducting from a scientific fact (read = not truth, but fact, which is based on happy lot of observation), a scientist can assume something that has not yet been observed, in other words, it is a well based quess. And this is the ground which makes science and religion appear similiar to many people. It can be said, keeping in mind the balance in the universe, the stars, planets and their orbits, the devolopment of intellect species and so on, that it would be a well based guess to assert that there is somekind of fundamental force (call it a law of nature or a God) that governs the universe.

But to many mystics, there are scientific facts in religions. What if texts of bible are not description of some actual and physical events, but an esoteric text descriping a psychology of man, and some fundamental laws of nature represented in allegorical and coded way? The way I see it, some religious texts hold great value when interpret correctly - but there is always the problem of interpretation. What did our ancient forefathers mean when they created the myth of Osiris for example? Did they just wanted to a story which is in no way spectacular in amusement? Or did they want perhaps to descripe the truth in the way they perceived it? Meanings and words change due the time, but some symbols and allegories remain, know those, and you have a key to some great wisdoms.

All the best,

[edit on 14-8-2008 by v01i0]

reply to post by the13thdeceptionist

Science and religion are not on the same coin. Science is based on observable, repeatable, provable evidence. Religion is based on belief, control, perception, hypocrisy, altruism for most & power for few, deception, ie: a government.

Well, I'll just make this brief. There is not as much disparity between science and spirituality as is commonly believed.

reply to post by DJMessiah



I tend to agree with you here. I have said for a long time now that the whole Evolution VS. Creationism dispute is ridiculous. I personally view such theories as evolution as an explanation of how God did what he did.

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth
Well, I'll just make this brief. There is not as much disparity between science and spirituality as is commonly believed.

Care to elaborate? I do believe science is incompatible with the notion of spirituality.

reply to post by science lol


I know you didn't point your question to me, but I am such loudspeaker I talk even not talked to... I hope this helps:

Spiritual being is finding the truth within, Scientific being tries to find the truth outside. Both operate with the concept of truth, altho their methodology is different. Check out earlier posts of this thread to find the answer. I won't bother with lenghty answer with someone who registered yesterday with such nick. Makes me feel like you've created another nick for this thread; I am gravely sorry if my intuition is incorrect and you are honest newcomer.. If that is the case, then: Welcome to ATS

Originally posted by v01i0
reply to post by science lol

 

I know you didn't point your question to me, but I am such loudspeaker I talk even not talked to... I hope this helps:

Spiritual being is finding the truth within, Scientific being tries to find the truth outside. Both operate with the concept of truth, altho their methodology is different. Check out earlier posts of this thread to find the answer. I won't bother with lenghty answer with someone who registered yesterday with such nick. Makes me feel like you've created another nick for this thread; I am gravely sorry if my intuition is incorrect and you are honest newcomer.. If that is the case, then: Welcome to ATS

Thanks for the welcome. No I didn't create this nick for this thread, I've been a lurker on these boards for a long time now and decided I'd start posting, but mainly in threads where I see the misuse of science. So your intuition is not that wrong.

Now you say spirituality tries to find the truth from within? Care to explain, any examples, say with comparison to how science would work?

Originally posted by science lol

Now you say spirituality tries to find the truth from within? Care to explain, any examples, say with comparison to how science would work?

OK. Spirituality starts from subjective, while science approach is objective (or at least should be). This is what I meant that spirituality is seeking the truth from within. Science is looking the same truth (as there cannot be many truths, at least not about the same matters) from outside world of subjective experience. Science need to measure, weight and label everything, and something that cannot be emprically and objectively measured, is something that science cannot comprehend, yet they don't deny the possibility...

Many spiritualists and occultists consider that the universe is one, and every being is a microcosmos of the macrocosmos, and this refers to the well known biblical phrase (sorry, a free translation) "As above, so below". So the spiritualists think that the truth can be found from within oneself. But science is a common public institute and it must keep itself within objective reality. Therefore, in a scientifical seminar - for example - the language and words being used must be clearly defined, so that no sentence cannot be misinterpret. To the profanes, this seems sometimes even ridicilous, but to everyone it is highly boring too

But in common language, if one sentence is spoken to three different persons, everyone of these persons can make their own interpretation about what has just been said. Yet can you claim that the sentence that has been spoken, is false to these people? I guess not, but they are being interpret from within their inner "worlds" or by so called "egoes". In spirituality, this is where the meaning of the objectivity joins the play. More egoes you have, the more you misinterpret meanings of spoken words. Less egeos, the more correctly you interpret what just been said.

I fear I cannot elobrate myself more coherently than this. I hope you'll get something outta it And then, here's the lenghty answer now that I know that you're really a serious user to ATS.

Have a good one,

[edit on 15-8-2008 by v01i0]

reply to post by v01i0
Thanks for the great reply, you've made yourself very clear.

Apart from science and religion being, basically, the same thing I also feel that they will eventually prove/discover each other.

As stated in previous posts science and religion are pretty much looking at the same questions but from different view points.

As we progress in science, particularly in quantum mechanics, it seems as if science is getting closer and closer to "god." This reminds me of a quote i, unfortunately, don't remember well. It goes something like this: with atoms and their electrons god is the space between the two. (if you know that quote please post it )

so yeah, just another short reply to my own thread lol

Originally posted by the13thdeceptionist
Apart from science and religion being, basically, the same thing I also feel that they will eventually prove/discover each other.

I'm not sure this is so. Religion and science would be a poor mix -- very much full of experiments on prayers (if I pray saying the deity's name THIS way is it more successful than if I say it THAT way?). Science would suffer from allowing belief-based proof. The Communists tried that, and they fell far behind the West in science.

As we progress in science, particularly in quantum mechanics, it seems as if science is getting closer and closer to "god."

This seems to have an expectation that the "god" will be the Judaeo-Christian god.

What if the true God is Coyote?