« 9a. The Death Process | Main | 10a. Evolution »
10. Religion and Science: No Contradiction
By Kurt Simons | June 10, 2007
God does not contradict Himself. There is but one set of truths, one seamless web of spiritual and physical law operating in the universe of the one God. The idea that there are contradictions is man-made, arising from a lack of understanding of either spiritual or physical reality. However, there is a difference between spiritual and physical law. As discussed in The First Coming of Jesus Christ, the physical universe was created so people could live in free will, and, if they wish, dismiss any evidence of spiritual reality. Thus, truth about spiritual law is given in the form of revelation, which can be believed or not, in free will.
The temptation in this situation, and one which modern “scientific” people have often fallen prey to, is to elevate scientific discovery to the level of a sort of religion, while ignoring or openly scorning revealed truth. People are certainly in free will to do this. But to appreciate how false and limited such a view is, we only have to go out at night and look up at the vast majesty of a starry sky, or consider the incomprehensible endlessly regressing complexity of subatomic forces or of the human mind. Science at its farthest reach will never touch more than a fraction of complete understanding of even its own physical realm. Indeed, as science breaks into ever more fragmented hyper-specialized pieces, it may be, in classic reductionist fashion, getting further away from rather than closer to the overarching truths of the universe. But the point here is that we will understand even less if we do not take into account the larger spiritual laws that lie within and beyond physical reality. For physical reality is but a pale shadow of the far more real spiritual forces that make up creation in its fundamentals (see Correspondences: The Great Lost Secret).
Some glimpse of the issues involved here can be seen in the basic elements of physical reality - light, electricity, magnetism, gravity, and energy. Scientific explanation of the physical universe is built out of these components, yet science cannot explain what they ultimately are. From what study has been made so far of the teachings of revelation on the matter, it is not clear whether these basic physical building blocks interface with the outer edge of spiritual reality or whether they are still fully within the natural realm. But they serve at the least as an example of the promise of coordinating the findings of science with the truth of revelation. Because spiritual laws lie within and above physical laws, they explain reality far more comprehensively than physical laws. Furthermore, spiritual laws are provided by revelation from God, complete and correct. How different this is from the long and painstaking search science must make to discover even minor physical laws. And how often what appears to be a physical “law” to one generation of scientists turns out to have been only a part of the law, or an outright mistake, to the next generation. These are shifting sands indeed on which to build an understanding of the world when compared to the house of understanding built on the “rock” of Divinely revealed spiritual truth!
Does a scientist’s attitude toward religion influence his or her success in finding links between the spiritual and natural? The truths of the Second Coming teach, with regard to thought about religious matters, that
“There are two basic attitudes of mind, the first leading to utter stupidity and insanity, the second to perfect intelligence and wisdom. The first occurs when someone denies everything, that is, says in his heart that he is unable to believe those things until he is convinced by things which he can grasp in his mind and perceive with his senses. This is an attitude which leads to utter stupidity and insanity and must be termed the negative attitude. The second occurs when someone regards affirmatively the things which comprise doctrine drawn from the Word, that is, when he thinks within himself and believes that those things are true because the Lord has spoken them. This is an attitude that leads to perfect intelligence and wisdom, and must be termed the affirmative attitude.”(Arcana Coelestia 2568: 4)
In other words, in the present context, the negative attitude approach is to doubt and challenge there being a spiritual reality or it having any connection to physical reality, while the positive attitude is to look for findings in science that confirm and support revealed spiritual truth. It seems fair to suggest that a scientist who looks only from the perspective of the negative attitude will find only continuing ambiguity and frustration concerning the essential truth about reality. For those who look no farther than these discoveries, reality must remain an unknowable riddle. But for those who will consider scientific fact in the light of the affirmative attitude, seeking to integrate spiritual revelation and natural scientific discovery, a whole new world of insight opens up. In comparison to the coming new science, built on the affirmative attitude, the achievements of the science we know today will be as a crawling infant is to a running adult, for under the new science people will no longer study just the physical sand particles on our shore of creation, but reality’s whole ocean. As noted in Correspondences: The Great Lost Secret, this new approach may be the key to science’s long-sought “theory of everything.”
For Further Reading
Pertinent books of the Second Coming
Angelic Wisdom concerning The Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom - Teachings on the mechanics of spiritual and physical creation.