The New Convergence of Science and Religion

[Guest guest]

Namaskar to All:

 

Anyone who's been here for any length of time probably has come

across my periodic posts about how Shaktism conflicts in no way with

Science (see for example, Msg #1301, 781, 712 -- all Nora's reposts

of things I wrote in the old club); in fact, each compliments and

enhances the other.

 

Anyway, this month's "Wired" magazine contains an excellent treatment

of the topic. The article is basically coming from a Western, Judeo-

Christian viewpoint, but it's quite well done. It's also fun to watch

how all of the contradictions and paradoxes disappear as soon as we

view them from a Shakta vantage point. So: Here's the intro to the

article -- it's quite a long piece, so at the end I supply the link

to the full version:

 

"THE NEW CONVERGENCE"

By Gregg Easterbrook

 

"The ancient covenant is in pieces: Man knows at last that he is

alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged

only by chance."

 

So pronounced the Nobel Prize-winning French biologist Jacques Monod

in his 1970 treatise Chance and Necessity, which maintained that God

had been utterly refuted by science. The divine is fiction, faith is

hokum, existence is a matter of heartless probability — and this

wasn't just speculation, Monod maintained, but proven.

 

The essay, which had tremendous influence on the intellectual world,

seemed to conclude a millennia-old debate. Theology was in retreat,

unable to explain away Darwin's observations; intellectual approval

was flowing to thinkers such as the Nobel-winning physicist Steven

Weinberg, who in 1977 pronounced, "The more the universe seems

comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless." In 1981, the

National Academy of Sciences declared, "Religion and science are

separate and mutually exclusive realms of human thought." Case closed.

 

And now reopened. In recent years, Allan Sandage, one of the world's

leading astronomers, has declared that the big bang can be understood

only as a "miracle." Charles Townes, a Nobel-winning physicist and

coinventor of the laser, has said that discoveries of physics "seem

to reflect intelligence at work in natural law." Biologist Christian

de Duve, also a Nobel winner, points out that science argues neither

for nor against the existence of a deity: "There is no sense in which

atheism is enforced or established by science." And biologist Francis

Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute,

insists that "a lot of scientists really don't know what they are

missing by not exploring their spiritual feelings."

 

Ever so gingerly, science has been backing away from its case-closed

attitude toward the transcendent unknown. Conferences that bring

together theologians and physicists are hot, recently taking place at

Harvard, the Smithsonian, and other big-deal institutions. The

American Association for the Advancement of Science now sponsors

a "Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion." Science luminaries who

in the '70s shrugged at faith as gobbledygook — including E. O.

Wilson and the late Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan — have endorsed

some form of reconciliation between science and religion.

 

FOR FULL ARTICLE, SEE:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/convergence.html