The Impact of Science on Spirituality #1

Agreeing to Disagree: Is the liberal, scientific worldview spiritually bankrupted?:
Session Notes

  1. Discussion Questions
    1. Where does science not touch you?
    2. How has science affected your faith/spirituality?
    3. What concerns you about the onslaught of science?
  2. Science is Total [Appleyard]
    1. effective
    2. know anything and do anything
    3. ubiquitous, ever growing
      • Technological imperative
    4. claims Truth
      1. evidential
      2. repeatable
      3. theoretical (speculative)
      4. cumulative
      5. tentative
      6. value-free, meaning neutral
    5. abolishes spirituality and faith
      • What is the outward marks or social face of spirituality and faith (i.e., its cosmology)?
        • must explain the world and define one's place in it
        • must match one's experience
        • must be effective
      • Science undermined Aristotelian cosmology, the pre-scientific basis of spirituality and faith
        1. reason and authority not sufficient; observation req'd
        2. a single human could undermine body of knowledge
        3. humans not central
        4. age of earth very old
        5. knowledge not complete
        6. novelty, perpetual change, discovery, innovation fundamental to cosmos
        7. God not needed in scientific method
      • effective, but not committed
      • value free, belief neutral
      • science can't answer why, but its total, so "why" not addressed
      • cosmology does not include God, heaven, or hell -- or salvation
      • "the cruel pessimism of science" vs the heroic struggle of science for truth [p.76]
        • key to struggle: separating our values from our knowledge of the world
        • there exist no goodness, purpose, or meaning in knowledge
      • Kant, et al separated God from nature and found the divine in the soul [p. 80].
      • but the fundamental conflict between science and religion remained [p. 81]:
        1. science claims no meaning in nature
        2. religion searches for meaning in nature
    6. The Dark Side
      • science and technology can be used for evil
      • holocaust, A-Bomb, chemical and biological warfare
      • even when the intent is not malignant the damage can be enormous
      • global warming, toxic waste, pollution
      • counter-science as science:
        1. environmentalism, ecology, the green movement
        2. humans as stewards of nature
        3. holistic biology
        4. energy economics
        5. earth as gaea
        6. environmentalism: requires faith; a religion of survival, not salvation
      • no longer can/could science be free of public scrutiny [p. 131]
        1. returning value into knowledge
        2. first the discovery/knowledge (internal autonomy)
        3. later the ethics and impacts (outside authority)
    7. Neo-classical science
      • classical science
        • science is the path to the whole truth
        • universal
        • abstract out local conditions: simple reality lays concealed behind local complexity
        • common sense
      • Relativity, Quantum, Chaos undermined classical science
      • Newtonian science incomplete
      • Uncertainty and incompleteness: God plays at dice
      • Inconsistent: Q and Rel
      • Observation effects results
      • Non-local
      • Complementarity: wave and particle
      • Nature is complex, fractal
    8. Finding meaning in nature via totalitarian science
      • new myths: Physics of Immortality, Holographic Universe, Tao of Physics
      • But science is volatile and if it changes, so does the value: God of the gaps
      • Appleyard completely disregards the theological efforts in this direction
    9. The self [chp 8]
      • expulsion of self from the world; souls disembodied; bodies de-souled
      • world objectified with self apart (until Q); view world from outside
      • world did not need us
      • humans as gods; humans as objects
      • no role or purpose explained
      • we are unique inasmuch we have self-consciousness
        • emerges from evolutionary complexity
        • our bodies our observed by the self
        • mind/souls (= self-consciousness) stand apart: pilot of the body
        • so self is one realm free of scientific scrutiny and has become a safe-haven
          1. the glorification of the self
          2. self-cultivation
          3. new age religion
          4. alt. therapies
          5. a narcissistic refuge
        • Q: observer not separate: self re-integrated back into world
      • AI: eventually even the body eliminated
  3. Science and Liberal Democracy [Appleyard]
  4. Science chained by Mammon
    • Appleyard does not address this.
    • Much science is funded privately motivated by profit
    • Consumerism drives science; consumerism pays for science
      1. Private business provides the funding and distribution
      2. Science provides the gadgets, bombs, and drugs
    • Example: The Human Genome Project
      • new drugs and other products worth billions of $$
      • the US Patent office allows newly discovered genes to be patented!
        1. first researcher determining the nucleotide sequence of a gene and the function of the protein coded for by the gene can claim exclusive rights to the information
        2. the scientist can then license these rights for a fee or royalty
        3. the commodification of the elements of life
    • Pure research is on the decline
      1. Corporations' pure research drying up
      2. Research must lead to (near-)immediate productization
    • Rather than the science as total, science has servant of Mammon
    • Consumer society and science mutually re-enforcing
  5. John Cobb: Negative Consequences of Science's Impact On Theology
  6. Some Islamic viewpoints:
    1. The Islamization of Science: Four Muslim Positions, Developing an Islamic Modernity -- from a review by Muzaffar Iqbal of Kalam
      1. Zia uddin Sardar (b. 1951) and the Ijmalis
        • "The claim of universality of ideas produced by theWestern civilization is ... a threat to the Islamic worldview"
        • Western science and technology a tool to propagate the West's economic and political agenda
        • science is not an objective activity but a cultural one
        • modern science deeply rooted in Western civilization
        • instead: reconstruction, complexity and interconnection
      2. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (b. 1933), Iranian, now in USA
        • advances notion of a Sacred Science
        • advocates reconstructing Islamic scientific thought on the basis of revealed knowledge
        • not to conquer nature, but function within Divine Commands
        • critical of secularization of science and its domination of nature
      3. Ismail Raji al-Faruqi and the International Institute of Islamic Thought (f. Herndon, VA 1981), a group of professional Muslims
        • the Muslim Ummah (community) is in a state of malaise, whose rootes are in influences foreign to Islam
        • Word of God is relevant in every human activity
        • God has created the Universe with purpose
        • God has made humanity viceregent for an appointed term
        • the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is the model and example
        • nature not to be exploited, but treated as a trust given by God
      4. Maurice Bucaille's The Bible, the Qur'an and Science (1978)
        • finds "scientific facts" in Qur'an
    2. from Nasr's A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World:
      • "Islamic science is related profoundly to the Islamic world view. It is rooted deeply in knowledge based upon the unity of Allah or al-tawhid and a view of the universe in which Allah's Wisdom and Will rule and in which all things are interrelated reflected unity on the cosmic level [p. 182]."
      • "In contrast, Western science is based on considering the natural world as a reality which is separate from both Allah and the higher levels of being. At best, Allah is accepted as the creator of the world, as a mason who has built a house which now stands on its own. His intrusion into the running of the world and His continuous sustenance of it are not accepted in the modern scientific worldview [p. 182]."
      • Islamic science always relates lower levels, such as the physical, of reality to higher levels in a hierarchy reflecting Allah's Wisdom.
      • Western science separates the physical and treats it as an independent reality which can be studied and known without reference to a higher level of being
      • Evolution was "very instrumental in destroying the spiritual meaning and the sense of sacredness of Allah's creation [p. 185]."
        1. destroyed the awareness of the continuous presence of Allah as Creator and Sustainer of living forms
        2. very great effect of alienating science from religion
        3. could study the wonders of creation without ever seeing the sacred
      • Scientism: philosophy that extends modern science world view (reductionism, etc.) to all things (totality)
        1. dominant modern worldview
        2. only scientism is valid
        3. religion intellectually irrelevant
        4. largely destroyed the spiritual reality around us
        5. removed "enchantment" from the world, and "destroying the basic Islamic idea of the phenomena of nature as being signs of Allah, the ajat which Allah manifests in His creation [p. 188]."
        6. scientists are our modern day priests
      • "The Islamic world has a special responsibility as the recipient of the Quranic revelation to act as the protector of Allah's creation, of the world of nature, and not to betray the function of khilafah or viceregency, which all Muslims possess by virtue of being human ...[p.192]."
  7. Science and Faith
    1. What aspects of spirituality are beyond the domain of science?
    2. What aspects of spirituality are within the domain of science?
    3. What aspects of science need to be harness to restore a collective spirituality?
    4. How might we do this?
NEXT: Effectively Disagreeing: Can the liberal, scientific worldview be spiritually nurturing?

References

  1. Appleyard, Bryan; Understanding the Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man; Doubleday 1993.
  2. Cobb, John B.; Negative Consequences of Science's Impact On Theology; CTNS Bulletin; Volume 20 Number 1; Winter 2000.
  3. Nasr, Seyyed Hossein; A Young Muslim's Guide to the Modern World; KAZI Publications, Inc. 1994.
  4. The Islamization of Science: Four Muslim Positions, Developing an Islamic Modernity -- a review by Muzaffar Iqbal of Kalam
©2002; Rev. John A. Mills wislit@worldnet.att.net