Can Science and Religion be Integrated?
Can science and religion be integrated? What comes to mind immediately is that religions themselves cannot agree with one another whereas science is basically monolithic. How can there even be trade between the two, let alone integration?
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Currently, the overall perception of science is that it is materialist. The belief is that science cannot be done without the dogma of material monism: all things of our experience have a material origin.
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On the other hand, there is common ground for all religions in three respects:
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all religions agree that there is God …
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All religions also posit the existence of non-material “subtle” bodies connected with our internal experiences–feeling, meaning, and values–in addition to the material body.
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All religions posit the importance of certain values as the goal of life; values such as, love, truth, beauty, justice, good.
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The Dogma of Material Monism
Currently, the overall perception of science is that it is materialist. The belief is that science cannot be done without the dogma of material monism: all things of our experience have a material origin.
It is only logical that the practitioners of materialist science should have something to object and negate about the three religious contentions about reality enunciated above.
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Materialists also posit that God, consciousness, mind, feelings, values, all things internal besides what we experience externally, matter, are explainable in material terms.
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In quantum physics, objects are not determined things of Newtonian vintage. Instead, they are waves of possibility. When we observe, these waves “collapse” into actual events in our experience. Instead of spread-out waves what we observe is a localized particle. This is the famous observer effect.
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The resolution of the paradox is to turn the materialist view of consciousness upside down. Let consciousness be the base of the world and let matter consist of waves of possibilities of consciousness. Consciousness chooses from the possibility waves of matter within it to collapse the actual events that we observe.
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For the materialist model of individual consciousness associated with each brain, the solution is called solipsism. Only your consciousness is real; everybody else is a fragment of your imagination.
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The good news is that not one, but three separate experiments are now showing that quantum consciousness, the author of downward causation is nonlocal, is unitive, is God.
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Source: Can Science and Religion be Integrated? - Amit Goswami
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