Text: Subject: [acim-l] Re: Science & Theology ate: 4 Oct 1998 14:34:38 -0000 rom: eply-To: A Course in Miracles List o: A Course in Miracles List On 3 Oct 1998 LaserKate@aol.com wrote: > Maybe, the power is in the question, rather than in the answer. I like that line! I think the "debate" as to which is more "true" or valuable," science or theology, is rather a problem of asking the wrong uestion. Let me offer a couple of thoughts on this. First off, what *is* "science" nd what *is* "theology?" 300 years ago Theology was called the "Queen of he Sciences." Academicians looked to it as the centrepiece of all nowlecdge for while other fields inquired into the "how" of the material orld we can apprehend with the five senses, Theology inquired into the why" of the mysteries of life, the riddles of the sages and the meaning f all the "how" business. The word theology comes from the Greek, "theo" (god) and "logia" (talk). ny time we talk about God we are doing "godtalk" or "theology." This ailing list, in which we talk about God a lot, is therefore "theology." "Science" has evolved in the last 300 years into a word that means a methodical inquiry of an empirical nature." The "doing" of science nvolves the "scientific method." This method is based on observation and easurement and repeatability and verification and mathematically precise ogic. With this method, pursued by generations of scientists who have ecorded their work so their successors can build on their shoulders, uman society has learned a great deal about the material stuff of the hysical universe. Science, in essence, focusses on the "how to." Theology focuses on the why to" and is only rarely dealing with anything that is measureable with ruler, scale, or thermometer and rarely dealing with anything that is oth measurable AND repeatable. For the physical sciences, if it is not easurable and repeatable, it can't be dealt with. The enormous success of the scientific method in physics and chemistry and iology in the past 300 years has led other scholars, notably the "social cientists" in such fields as History and Psychology to attempt to apply he Physicist's intellectual tools, objectivity, empiricism, measurement nd repeatability to their own inquiries. Indeed, even Theologians and hilosophers have picked up those tools. It should be rather intuitively obvious in some measure that rulers, cales, and thermometers, so useful in physics and chemistry, are not f much value in tackling psychological problems, historical riddles, or he interpretation of a prophetic text. Now the last 300 years are very important because the "role of religion" nd the "role of science" in society have changed dramatically. 300 years go there was very little in the world that we'd recognize as "science." hat is, there was little systematic, methodical inquiry. 500 years ago nd earlier there were only very occasional outbreaks of it and none were ustained for very long. Instead of Science, Religious Culture was looked o for explanations of the physical nature as well as the spiritual nature f the universe and human experience. The debate between "science and religion" began to arise about 300 years go when science (methodical inquiry) first began to get some reliable esults and offer "provable" and objectively verifiable answers to some of he questions which religion had always previously been asked to answer. n some cases the scientific answers appeared different than the raditional answers and this created a "crisis" or "conflict." Archaeology and Geology and Biology offered some of the first challenges. igging in ancient ruins, archaeologists found layer upon layer of the uins of long forgotten settlements. How old are the oldest? they asked. o answer this they calculated how long it takes for a centimeter of ruins" to accumulate. The top layers could be measured against ated historical records. Extrapolating that the lower layers were laid own at roughly the same rate, one can estimate the date of a deposit by t's depth. Geologists working in gorges such as the Niagara and the rand Canyon observe layer after layer of sedimentary rock on top of the asalt bedrock. In some of this rock one finds fossilized sea creatures, n other rock other sorts of fossils. Some was obviously the bed of ncient seas and other is obviously the remains of ancient forests (peat, oal and oil deposits). Again one can calculate from contemporary bservations how long it takes for a centimeter of sediment to accumulate nt he ocean floor and from this calculation, figure out roughly how long t takes to lay down a kilometer of sedimentary rock. In studying ancient ountain ranges such as the Appalachians or the Canadian Shield, one can eadily observe the stumps of massively eroded mountains. One can measure ow long it takes a mountain to be worn away by wind and rain and ice and uickly see that the Canadian Shield is the remains of a once magnificent ountain chain that first arose 2 thousand million years ago. Those who elieve the Bible says the world was created in 4004 B.C. (of course it ctually says no such thing) encountered a "crisis." Biology, most notably Darwin, came to learn the mechanics of natural election, something that we can all observe day by day. Those who are ost well adapated to their environment are more likely than the less well dapated to reproduce and pass their genes to the next generation. Over eons, species diversification and "evolution" occurs. Confirmed by the eologists who find the fossil remains in the deepest layers of ocean ediment are simple, primitive creatures, and as you move up, you get more nd more complex lifeforms over a span of hundreds of millions of years, t is clear that "life" and all the species we know weren't created in an nstant, but "evolved" over time. Indeed, medicine knows well the nature f natural selection and evolution because modern drugs which create very nhospitable environments for certain disease organisms result in the apid evolution of "disease resistant strains" of those organisms. If you ave a drug that can kill 99.9% of one species of bacteria it is not long efore the only members of that species that survive to reproduce are the .01% who are drug resistant! Soon the species has "evolved" through asic "natural selection" into the drug resistant form. This is all very empirical and substantially indisputable since anyone can bserve and measure the process of natural selection and anyone can read illions of years of geological and biological "history" in the crust of he earth. Doubters really should go immediately to the Grand Canyon on he Niagara Gorge and scale it, and see the layer upon layer of edimentary rock for themselves. Yet there are still some who insist "the Bible can't be wrong" and herefore the crust of the earth MUST be wrong! Or possibly, they might rgue, the scientists' interpretation of what the crust of the earth says s wrong, the crust perhaps is a reliable witness but we have not the wit o understand its testimony. I've developed the view that the Bible is as reliable as any human witness nd that those of us who believe it says the earth was created in a week n 4004 B.C. have misread its testimony. B.J. points out that the Bible says the earth is round. Well it also says he earth has four corners. If it "can't be wrong" even when it disagrees ith itself then we must conclude that such statements were not intended o be scientific, authoritative proclamations of geological facts but ather figures of speech in contemporary use when they were written that ommunicated to the audience to whom they were written something that made ense in the context of the moment. No Biblical author was thinking cientifically (science had to wait for another 1700 years to be invented) or participating in a scholarly inquiry into the age of a certain rock. o use their words in such a debate is to *misuse* and *misread* their ords and their meaning. And this leads us into the problem of "text" - a problem we find as much ith the text of ACIM as with any other text of a spiritual nature which ontains "truths" and is revered by readers. The Bible, the Koran, the itas, etc. etc. etc. There are a lot of "sacred" texts in the world. nd we may say of them that they "contain truth" and even that "they annot be wrong" (because if there is truth in there, how can they be rong?) There are those who say the Bible (or other book) has "all the answers" ut we know we can't take that literally even if we agree. Answers to hat questions? Does the Bible answer the question "how much gas is left n my tank?" Does the Koran answer the question "how old is my dog?" o the Gitas answer the question "is this flour rancid?" Of course not. hose are questions which "science" (methodical inquiry and careful easurement and observation) can answer - they are NOT the sort of uestions a sacred text can answer. So the science vs. religion debate is like a comparison of apples and ranges, which is "true" or which is "better." Any text, any accurate and recise and "true" text, pulled out of its context and misapplied lsewhere can only lead to completely nonsensical results. We can look at the crust of the earth as a text - it contains a record of vents long past and the record is "inerrant." That is, the earth's crust oes not lie and is incapable of error or deceit. Same with rchaeological remains - there can be no error in the record. Yet we may ach read the same record and come up with a different idea. So too with ny and every text. No two people will hear the same speech or read the ame document and have precisely the SAME understanding of what has been eard or read. So even if we assume that a given text is as "inerrant" as he crust of the earth, all we can ever know of that text is our own erception of it. Since our perception is prone to error and omission, hat does it mean to say the text is inerrant? Usually such statements ean "my understanding of it is correct to the best of my belief and I on't even consider the possibility that my understanding is wrong because he text cannot be wrong." This is called, in science "ill logic." Or on sequitur. The conclusion is not logically supported by the evidence. One can never get "absolute truth" from any text, all one can ever get is perception which may or may not closely resemble the idea the author of hat text intended to convey. One thing is certain, if you take the text ut of its original context, or fail to appreciate its original context, our perception is GUARANTEED, 100% of the time to be utterly incorrect. To do that is rather like taking the transcripts of a witness in court, a itness who has testified in two different trials, and reading the wrong ne. Sure the witness may have spoken "truly" in each case, but if you on't have the right context and the right question in mind, your reading perception) of the "true" testimony will result in completely "false" erceptions. To ask the Bible to be a Biology text is to guarantee bogus results. It's ot a Biology text and nowhere does it set out to explain how life arose n earth or how the earth arose beyond saying that God had something to do ith it in the beginning, a notion that science knows better than to even ddress. Science can't address it because there is nothing measurable or bservable about it. Interestingly though, the Creation Story in the Bible agrees, in its broad trokes, with the Creation Story of Science. In the beginning the earth as without form and void, then along came light, then land and sea were eparated, then life arose, and then some time later, humanity showed up. That's what Genesis says and there is nothing there Science would disagree ith. And so where is the debate? The Bible does NOT put a date on those vents and while it says "seven days" it also notes that time is a ifferent thing to God than to us so we can't take this as necessarily eaning "seven ordinary calendar days" and Science tells us it certainly asn't seven ordinary calendar days, but more like billions of years. So if we put Genesis in its proper context, that being a culture which had o concept of what we mean by science and no way of measuring geological ime and even less interest in so doing, we see that it says "it all appened a long time ago, God spoke and the *result*, after some ime elapsed, was all the diversity of life we see around us." Expect for he "God Spoke" part (which is byond the purview of Science) we can bserve, scientifically, that the account is correct. Science can detail how" it all happened but not the "why" - the "why" is a Theological uestion. Now that is the "theological idea" in Genesis. In ACIM we have a new wist on that theological idea. We read in several places in ACIM things ike "the world was made as an attack thought on God." What does this ean? Does it mean that Genesis is incorrect and should be corrected to ead "In the beginning, Men made the world as an attack thought on God?" ell no, it can't mean that. We know the physical universe was around a ong time before men. The date of the arrival of "man" on earth is hotly ebated but nobody suggests a date more than 3 million years ago. Some ut the date at about 50-100 thousand years ago. Depends what you mean by man." Do we include homo erectus and homo neanderthalis? Or only homo apiens sapiens? Anyway - the earth and lots of lifeforms were here long ong before we humans showed up in ANY form! So we might wonder if ACIM isn't meaning "the world" in some sense other han "this physical universe and this physical planet." And we find lots o suggest that there are several "worlds" Jesus speaks about in ACIM. ne of them is the "world of perception" which, as we have noted, is lways different than the "world of objective fact." They may be ubstantially the same but never idential and they may be wildly ifferent. That's because our five senses only collect limited and nreliable bits of data about the physical world. Maybe then it means that the world of hatred, conflict, sin, unhappiness nd pain was made by us as an attack thought on God. THAT reading would t least make sense and be congruent with other things we think we know. t would agree with Genesis (or at least not contradict it) and it would gre with both physical and psychological science. Psychology well knows hat "attitude" (how you react to things) is far more important to mental ealth than the things you react to! In other words, how you respond is ore imortant than what happens to you. So the world of our perceptions s largely self-made, and if it is unhappy it's an attack thought on God nd if it's happy - well ACIM also tells us that God's will is for us to e happy - so if we are, then we are in God's will and this is the "happy ream" or "the kingdom of heaven on earth." And THAT was not made as an ttack thought on God but made with God and in accord with his will. This interpretation at least has the advantage of being logically onsistent and congruent with other fields of knowledge. Now Genesis states that God put Adam into a trance - to sleep. ACIM notes hat nowhere in the Bible is any reference made to Adam waking up. Now CIM is the first time i'd ever noticed that obscure little line in enesis, no one else had ever pointed it out or made anything of it. ACIM akes a lot of it - we are "asleep" in a "dream" since the "dawn of reation" (or at least the dawn of the human race) and our purpose here is o "wake up." Add that to the idea that "the world is an attack thought n God" (the world of shame and blame and sin and guilt, a world that is ot REAL, but just perceived or conjured up in our dream) and we start to ee what we need to wake up from and that "Salvation" and "waking up" are retty much synonymous. Now to those who would ask "what has Theology ever given the world that cience hasn't?" I would offer that as a first example. Theology can tell s why we are here and what we should do. Science can tell us how it orks and what we can do with the physical matter of the world, Theology an tell us what we *should* do to be happy. Science can tell us a lot bout our materiality but when we speak of our spirituality, and the fact hat we are not just matter, that we are also spirit, we are into the errain of the divine and the province of Theology. In other words, ithout "godtalk" and "godthought" we must remain asleep in what is robably often a bad dream, but through awakening the divine in ourselves, r awakening to the divine in ourselves, we move toward wholeness. Science and Theology are convergent lines of inquiry. The "Truth" written n the Bible and ACIM is also written in the physical structure of the niverse and there Physics tells us now that matter is just an illusion, holly a product of the limmitations of our five senses - in fact all atter is mostly empty space with a few swirls of energy which, it appears ore and more, is the same stuff as consciousness. Oh boy! And Einstein hinted out 60 years ago that time itself is an illusion created by the structure of our bodies and that it doesn't really *exist* as we experience it at all. Oh boy! If you follow the "truth" and let it speak and refrain from imposing your own prejudices upon it, wherever you read it, it all leads right back to the same place and that place is Theology. While Science scruplously avoids tackling "spirituality" directly, all scientific inquiry leads to the door of spirituality. And ACIM says, we may take as long as we want, but we will all eventually ind salvation - wake up - because the universe, time itself, is structured by God to bring about His will which is our salvation. And of course, whether we recognize it or not, that is also our own will. So I would say that to perceive a "conflict" between Science and Theology s to invent an attack thought on God. There is no "dispute" between the wo and the honest pursuit of science leads to the same ultimate truth as he honest pursuit of Theology or anything else. Those who see a "conflict" between the Bible and Science similarly, in my iew, have perceived an attack thought on God in error, through the simple xpedient of misreading the Bible, taking a "true witness's account" and pplying it to the wrong questions. There really is no conflict and the erception thereof is just a diversion. Generally speaking, it is my view that where we see conflict - or believe n the reality of any attack thought - we are thinking attack thoughts on od and we are therefore caught in illusion and our perception needs orrection, a correction the Holy Spirit will most graciously deliver IF e simply ALLOW it! I have developed this view from reading ACIM, that is here the idea comes from, and from applying it in my own life each time I etthe idea that there is an "attack" going on. Finally, there is that word "religion." Historically is is closely linked o "Theology." And religions often have a lot of trouble with their heologians - Theologians are often denounced as heretics. Religion was he source of the "conflict" with science, and religion's upset was caused ntirely by the challenge to its worldly power and authority over men's inds. In my view, the power that science challenged was itself a mistake religion should never have sought that sort of worldly power and was horoughly corrupted by it when it did. Religion fought science the way eligion fought all the prophets and Jesus himself in his lifetime. In oth cases the "truth" won when religion built barricades against it, and o in the end, the truth always must win. ACIM tells us that "falsehood" is an "illusion" and an "error" and isn't eally real. While it may masquerade as an "attack thought" and think of tself as that, it is not, because the truth cannot really be attacked and o needs no defence. It merely needs a voice. In the end it will be ecognized. Errors need not be attacked, they only need to be corrected nd the "corrector" is the Holy Spirit. And that folks, is about all I have to say about THAT today :). Now I hink I had better do the laundry! All the best, Doug +------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A Course in Miracles List : 268 members (public) http://www.spiritweb.org/Spirit/acim-l.html Archive-password: jesus List-Operator: Doug Thompson

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