An essay on science and spirit.
The Ache of Spirit
by Sidhe
Oh, to be able to see the world as more than a mass of particles smashing into each other.. To believe that even when our slight substance is overwhelmed by dark matter, the universe still might be a place where we can matter. It would be a comfort, wouldn't it? to believe that all of existence were more than mere material obeying lifeless laws. Only we know there isn't any way this can be so. We have already looked behind the curtain, and found there a profound, lifeless nothing.
Actually, that isn't true. Unfortunately, it is a special symptom of the modern condition that we see things through a glass darkened by our own ignorance. In a few short paragraphs, I hope I can equip my readers with some tools with which they can evaluate the conventional wisdom that says we live in a dead universe.
There are (at least) two great flaws in our common understanding of the world around us, and both are promulgated wilfully by science, for its own reasons. The first is the way that the question of whether or not there is any "there" there, spiritually speaking, is dealt with in science. This first problem comes in four pieces.
Every way of thinking rests on assumptions, which is something we ought to know since philosophy knows it well and has taught the fact for centuries. But for whatever reason, every age rests upon unexamined assumptions, and ours today is no different. The scientific method is itself a tool based on assumptions. These are useful assumptions when they are restricted to their proper sphere, but they muck things up pretty well when they are promoted beyond that sphere and taken as truths in themselves. What are these assumptions? 1. That the scientific method invariably leads to the truth; 2. That everything can be reduced to simple terms; 3. That subtle qualities (like "truth" "justice" "morality", etc.) are explainable as effects of the materials upon which they depend, (and therefore their value is relative); 4. Everything that happens is part of a deterministic chain of actions and reactions, and if we knew the starting conditions of all things, we'd know everything.
It's true that certain divisions within science have sometimes more and sometimes less to do with any particular assumption given above; for instance, quantum mechanics probably does not buy into #4 anymore, knowing as they do that at the smallest levels of matter, there is not determinism, but probability. I grant this point, but on the whole, as science engages culture, these four qualities hold. It takes but a little thought to realize that these are unprovable assumptions. That they have been useful there is no doubt, but there is no argument by which one can prove that these are really really it when it comes to describing how the world works. If you add to this the philosophical base that science rests upon, materialism (or the belief that only matter exists) you may begin to understand what a stacked deck any discussion of spirit will be playing against.
Indulge me for a moment here in supposing that there was a spiritual element to our lives. Will science ever be able to prove it? Aside from the fact that materialism has already legislated against it, a few turns of the mental wheels will probably convince you that, no, science could never prove spirit. Like the question, "What happened before the big bang?", any question of spirit lies outside of science. It has been defined away.
If that leaves you intellectually dissatisfied, then we are half way there, because this is only the first prong of the two pronged attack science makes upon spirit. The second is much more nefarious, and intellectually dishonest. For its own reasons, science as a cultural force ignores evidence contrary to its world view.
Because I can't take a lot of time and space, and this could really take books and books of space to discuss properly, I'll limit myself to a discussion of Darwinism. I have heard it said by scientists that Darwinian evolution is the best supported theory ever, hands down. I have no reason to deny this. It seems well proven that organisms will evolve, given time and environmental pressures/opportunities. But there is an unexamined problem at the heart of Darwinian evolutionary theory. It is taken as truth that all things that live have evolved, but in fact, at the level of biochemistry, it's impossible for this to be so. You can search, for instance, the entire library of scientific articles and you will not find one article that describes how the immune system evolved, nor the blood clotting system, nor the cilium (that cute little swimming tail cells can have), nor how to evolve toward AMP (the foodstuff of cells) without first having it.. Well the list goes on. (If you find this interesting, read Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box.) But I shouldn't have to spell out that these fundamental parts of living organisms, if they didn't evolve, must have been designed..
You would expect science, interested as it is in truth, to cop to this straight up. But it doesn't. You can understand how scientists, too busy in their work, perhaps, for the niceties of philosophical discussion, might make the mistake I outlined in the first prong, that of simply assuming science describes all that can be. But this second sin of omission.. There is something sinister in it, no?
I'll tell you what that is. It's the age old war between science and religion. Science having now gotten the upper hand, hard won, has no interest in letting religion back in the arm wrestling match.
But in throwing down religion, science has also cut itself off from avenues of investigation that might yet bear fruit. Perhaps there are things yet to be discovered by taking spirit seriously. Whether this is true or not, there is certainly something to be said for intellectual purity in the search for ultimate truth.
I hope my readers have realized by this point that I am not making any particular religious argument, only arguing that spirit isn't as dead an issue as you might have been led to believe. I won't even argue that the designers of our parts need have been spiritual beings - I don't know who or what they were. For all I know they ride around the universe in "pearly pellucid cars" (ala Shelley's "Queen Mab"). I am simply pointing out that there is much about the world that we do not know, and our present methods will never lead us to know more about it.
BTW, one good book to turn to for a discussion of science and spirit is Why Religion Matters by Huston Smith.