Granted that for the past four centuries the relationship between religion and science has been a conflictual one in the West, there is good reason to believe that such conflict will diminish significantly in the coming years as we evolve further and further away from both the limiting parameters of the Axial-based model of religious faith that has dominated Western culture for over 2000 years and away from the dogmatic adherence to naturalism/materialism that has come to dominate the scientific community in much the same way that doctrinal orthodoxy once dominated the church.
The model for Axial faith was based on an a priori acceptance of a sacred text – the Bible for Christians – as the mandatory starting point for valid knowledge of truth or the nature of reality. If one starts from that position, a conflict with science is inevitable, given both the methodology of science and the content of scientific knowledge. If you start out with Biblical literalism as a prerequisite, you’re going to have a difficult time coming to terms with a scientific understanding of the nature of the Cosmos. But that simply will not be a problem in the religion of the future if that religion is no longer dependent on ancient texts for a starting point. If the spirituality of the 21st century and beyond is grounded in empirical experience, or our capacity to sense the Sacred or Spirit, then we are not locked in to concepts of the nature of the world that were developed over two millennia ago. A contemporary, post-Axial spirituality, in which a believer need not make any intellectual or moral sacrifices in order to believe, is one which almost by definition will be open to incorporating whatever the scientific worldview has to offer. If the 21st century spirituality is rooted in a simple awareness of the existence of a transcendent Meaning and Goodness in the Cosmos, unattached to any specific culturally-limited and parochial myths and legends, then the opportunity for a religion vs. science conflict is far less likely to arise. The new religion, rooted in the Spiritual Minimalism which we described in a previous post, of the post-Axial Age is one which finds no basis to challenge science. At the same time, however, we should recognize that science also is likely to make certain adjustments that will further facilitate a reconciliation with religion. For starters, science itself will hopefully become less dogmatic and recognize that while the scientific method is a remarkable tool for understanding the realm of matter/energy as it exists in space/time, such a comprehensive understanding of the natural world does not preclude the existence of a spiritual dimension, which, by its every definition, stands outside of or transcends the natural realm. Science tells us a lot about the world of “stuff” – but it tells us nothing about the spiritual dimension of meaning and value. In addition, as we have indicated earlier, many in the scientific community already recognize that the scientific dogmatism that sees reality in strictly materialist and mechanistic terms is no longer credible in light of the findings of how the quantum world functions. So neither religion nor science is going away, but both are changing, and changing in rather dramatic and significant ways such that the centuries-old conflict between them will continue to diminish. Early in the 20th century, the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead spoke of the need for a “deeper religion and more subtle science,” and that appears to be what is slowly emerging. The spirituality of the 21st century will be “deeper” in the sense that it will be free from adherence to ancient texts and the parochial mythological worldviews found in those texts, and rooted in a spiritually open empiricism. Science of the 21st century will be more subtle in the sense that it will be freed from a reductionist, deterministic, simplistic materialism and liberated from the hubris of 20th century science’s parochial notion that science alone provides a true and comprehensive explanation of the nature of reality. Science will be open to the existence of Mystery, and religion will be open to the experience of Mystery, in all of its glorious multiplicity of manifestations.
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