# Faith and Reason



## PPPP (Nov 26, 2006)

I moved this since I realized it was totally off topic for the thread's purpose. it's in response to:
http://www.dpselfhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=100487#100487



ledganteast said:


> Science both as academic field and a method is about developing hypotheses based on observation, which are adopted as truth only if they pass rigorous testing through experimental reproducibility or logical validation only.
> 
> Spirituality subscribes to none of this and is in direct opposition to it.Which is the sole reason I did not study Neurology.


I see often that fundamentalism is in conflict with science (my biology teacher in high school didn't believe in evolution)

In the religious environment in which I was raised, there was never any idea that faith and reason were in conflict. I was raised with the idea that science is a way to understand the workings of the universe and better understand our faith.
To put it another way, science can give us a window into the actual design of the universe and the actual workings of creation.
It's very egotistical to say that you know better than god.

Now you can believe that or not, it's sure not my place to tell others what to believe, but there have been people from Thomas Aquinas to Albert Einstein who have believed that Faith and reason/science were not in conflict.
If you look back through history you can see that there have always been spiritual people and people of faith who have been able to reconcile spirituality (and/or faith) and reason.


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## CECIL (Oct 3, 2004)

First of all that quote is slightly eroneous: A hypothesis is NEVER accepted as truth. Its only ever accepted as a working model. Hypotheses are always designed so they can only ever be proven wrong. You can never prove one right because the next day something may come along to prove it wrong. So basically, its accepted as a working model until evidence to the contrary is presented.

Personally I think that faith and science are currently in opposition. That is because the scientific method is built from the ground up to deny any involvement of the subjective. It is built from the ground up to seperate any subjective experience from the process. On the contrary, faith/spirituality/religion, at least in the genuine practice of it rather than what they teach at Sunday School, is heavily influenced by subjective phenomenon. The fact that these phenomena can't be objectively observed isn't as much proof they don't exist but suggest to me that science hasn't evolved to the point of being able to understand it.

However, no matter what you are doing, even if you are a scientist, you have subjective experience. Experiments don't just happen by themselves, hypotheses don't test themselves. There's always a person there who is involved in the process and that person has subjective experience. You'll never read about that subjective experience in a scientific journal though.

Personally I think the two can be complementary, but it involves changes on both sides of the fence. Cutting edge physics and so forth is only just acknowledging the holographic nature of the universe and the idea that everything is interconnected, even if there is no direct physical link. Its going to take some time for that information to filter down into mainstream thought, but when it does it will change the way we see the world and change the way we experience ourselves and each other.

I'm really hoping it will come to the stage where spirituality and science can cooperate, because I believe the two are complementary. I'm just not quite sure how to go about doing that yet.

Cool idea for the day: If everything is interconnected it means that all information can be accessed instantaneously by anyone, anywhere at any time (regardless if its information about past, present or future). Instead of filling kid's heads with facts and telling them the only information they can access is that which they've personally learned, we can teach them how to access a universal "Grid" of information instantaneously. You'll never need to remember anything because anything you'll ever need to know is accessible just by asking.


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