Vote for my NYTimes comment on integrating science with religion

There is a lively debate on science vs religion in the NYTimes. If you log in to the NY Times you can vote to make it more likely this comment on the power of Integral Theory to resolve the apparent conflict between science and religion will get more widely read.

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/science-and-religion-lives-and-rocks/  

My comment is number 150 and here is the text:

Ms Smith correctly points out that both science and religion need to be adequately defined. But to do that we need an intellectual architecture that is adequate to the task. Fortunately there is
a system robust enough to claim “underneath-it-all status”, because it precisely CAN define and integrate the scientific and religious domains

Start with the premise that every human system, particularly ones with centuries of practice behind them like science and religion, contain a partial truth, and then invent a world view that allows us to assess what is true and false in both of those systems.

Culture evolves. Religion has been with us since the earliest human cultures, moving from Magic to the still prevalent Mythic forms, what we Rationalist moderns currently call fundamentalist belief. Bill Maher does an excellent job at portraying his flabberghastedness at how many Americans are willing to take Christian myths literally. However, what Bill fails to realize is that religion itself has already evolved to the rational/scientific i.e. EXPERIMENTAL level, although it is more rarely practiced than the mythic form.

The Introspective methods of Tibetan Buddhists, for example follow the 3 Steps of modern science:

1. Set up an experiment

2. Gather the data

3. Check results with peers

For Buddhists the experiment is sitting and meditating in a certain way, the hypothesis is that by doing this you will notice (specific, well-studied) results such as a less turbulent thought-stream, a sense of well-being, etc and you will talk this over with other mediators to compare findings.

Thus there is an aspect of a religious practice - meditation and prayer, that can and does produce results to the Investigator, just as a lab experiment would to a scientist. The difference is only in domain. The scientist operates on the Exterior/Material world, the meditator is operating on the Interior/Experiential world. Both domains exist and are non-contradictory.

So what to do about the truth claims of Mythic religion? Ignore them as literal fact of course, but validate them completely as Interior experiences. Notice the ecstasy a Pentecostalism is experiencing when contemplating Christ. She is in bliss, her brain is producing juicy neurotransmitters. She is experiencing something undeniably real (her MRIs and altered-state brain waves have, in fact, been recorded in the lab). However she may interpret her experience according to her mythic, religious belief...she was with Jesus. The experience that her religion offered is real but her belief that the earth is 6,000 years old is not true.

And... perhaps , just perhaps, she was with the Astral body of a historical person named Jesus. It is possible isn't it? Any scientist who claims that there is no other reality than what can be perceived by the senses and our current scientific instruments trained on physical events, is committing an outrageous overstepping of his domain. In such Scientism, we often see 2 errors: that the laws of physics successfully explain every event in the universe (sorry, only the laws of biology explain life) and that there is no such thing as Interior experience or at best, that is irrelevant. Obviously, there is a coherent world of Interior events, experienced by each and everyone of us. Proof? Who is reading this comment? If you answered \"I am\" then you are acknowledging your Interior experience of yourself. Given that the post-modernists showed us that we filter every experience through our own beliefs and feelings I will leave to you the consideration of the relevance of yours and everyone else's Interior experience to the tumultuous world we face today.

So what is true in Mythic religious practice is, for example, the experience of altered states of consciousness. What is false is that the events contained in Biblical creation myths actually occurred.

What is true in Scientific practice is the vast body of objective evidence gathered over the last 500 years. What is false is the claim that nothing exists beyond material reality and that the only domain worth investigating is the Exterior world of physical events. If we believe the latter, then all experiments and the data gathered by those Buddhist meditators is meaningless.

So here is a smattering of argument to entice you into the notion that there can be a system which successfully integrates the truth claims of both science and religion. Check out Ken Wilber's Integral Theory.
 

My comment is number 150