Science and spirituality
Submitted by Heather on July 30 1999 at 10:33:12
In reply to Re: Spiritual transcendence Submitted by Gerald from New Zealand on July 30 1999 at 06:55:24
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"You say that 'the Christian doctrine of letting go of worldly desire'. Yes, that was the concept that I had grown up with, but that did not make any sense, until after a lot of meditation I suddenly understood that I had to quantify desire as: 'I will not be happy until I have ....., a boat, a girlfiend, sex etc etc.'" I was fortunate enough, during my early adulthood exploration of Christianity, to read Dante, who gives a wonderfully simple explanation of that concept (if I may paraphrase him): insofar as worldly desires take a person further away from God, they are tools of the devil; insofar as they bring one closer, the are tools of God. Or, to put it another way, any time that worldly goods become more important to us than God, whatever good they have disintegrates. "Aristotle is not to be blamed. That is like saying science limits the contact with God." First of all, let my say that my freshman-year thesis was on Aristotle, so I'm not an Aristotle hater. :) Moreover, I took three years of science in college and four years of math – some of which was devoted to studying the connection between science and theology – so I'm not attacking science. What I'm attacking is a particular type of science, one invented by Aristotle, that says or at least suggests that spiritual experiences cannot occur in this world, because we can only gain knowledge through our outward physical senses. This type of science was dogma from the seventeenth century until the twentieth century, when some scientists began to realize that things weren't quite that simple; it remains dogma in the minds of many lay people, hence the agonizing efforts of some Christians to denude the New Testament of any references to visions and miracles. I don't think that Aristotle realized the implications of what he was saying, nor do I think that early modern scientists such as Newton realized it. The Christians in the eighteenth century realized it, though, and many of them turned to Deism, the belief that God winds up his mechanical clock (the world) and then lets it run on its own, without making any further contact with the world. In certain ways, the Deists – who appreciated the wonders of nature as God's handiwork – had a beautiful vision, but it was a limited vision, one that didn't allow for the type of experiences that you've had. Heather |