Re: Science and Religion

[John Kineman <***>]

John M wrote:

> ...
> I doubt whether your father was an atheist, who needs a god to deny. His
> nature-complexity is above that.

I agree with this view - which is why I wrote that I thought the Rosen
philosophy - i.e., the foundational aspect of the theories - has the
potential to integrate science and religion when both grow up. I have as
little use for dogmatic religion as dogmatic science, but I find equal
value in both introspection and investigation of the "external" world
and believe strongly that these two realms of knowing are much in need
of integration for a fully realized human being. I am equally happy
listening to good, respectful scientific theory as to the ideas of the
Dhali Lama on the nature of light or various gurus on the tenants of
morality and karma. Both have useful ideas to contribute to one field or
another, if one does not confuse levels. Also, any concept of wholeness
is ultimately an introspective view, as we have no other way of directly
perceiving a whole (a part is a whole in some context - we separate them
by perceiving and thinking). It is the realm where science needs to go
next and to do so it needs to formalize ways of recognizing information
from introspective inquiries. The question of "what is life" would be
missing a great deal of useful data if we fail to use the fact that we
are life; or that all of our inner percepts, religious, scientific,
etc., are part of what life does, at least in our case, and probably
with precedents in other life forms, since we evolved and were not
created de novo out of dust, as it were. Blanket insistance that what is
revealed through introspection must be explained as products of life
form, and not in some way cause of it, are just another form of material
reduction. We don't know which between inner and outer views, between
functional specification and realization, is cause and which is result,
and by all that we are currently studying in R-complexity, we must count
among the greatest possibility the idea that they are both, both. But
this is nothing more than remaining open minded, as it doesn't endorse
any particular dogma on either side. I think I have enough experience on
this subject to know that we will not dismiss the conceptual world in
this discussion, any more than we will dismiss the classical world of
material reduction. Both may be annoying at times, but we will have to
deal with it.

JJK

PS My former signature line: "Life is the dance between spirit and form."