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 That excerpt is very appropriate to what I think is one of the grave
difficulties this type of discussion always experiences--monolithic views of
science and religion. There is much more to religion than is usually
asserted, much that brings it in line with science and speaks against (or
rather, speaks about developmentally appropriate manifestations of) faith
and dogma. There are evolvements of religion and science that even staunch
evolutionists are hard pressed to elucidate, but are all important in these
discussions.

This is, of course, a wickedly complex topic, but I just want to suggest
that a primary motivator within both the practice of science and the
practice of religion is a yearning to know. There is an effort to build a
solid foundation from which to construct our being and becoming. And the
basic principles of generating valid knowledge are precisely the same for
both science and religion--with the proviso that not all religion nor all
science actually follow these principles in practice (we can characterize
these differences in several ways, such as mature science/religion v.
immature science/religion, deep s/r v. shallow s/r, braod s/r/ v.v narrow
s/r, but they all amount to teh same thing--there are qualitative
differences within religion and science and we should be aiming for the best
development in each domain when looking for a shared horizon and health).

So, before this e-mail spins out of control, let me cut to the chase in two
ways:

1) Ken Wilber (whose name I've invoked on this forum before) does a
fantastic job with this topic and check in with me offline if you want some
recommended reading. I'm basically reconstructing some of his arguments.

2) I'm sparing detail aplenty here, but there is just boatloads of evidence
that there is a way to integrate science and religion (or at least critical
subsets of these endeavors) without slipping into something like Gould's
non-ovelapping magisteria, which is akin to a "render unto Caesar the things
that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." Because while
differentiated domains are good, dissociated domains are not, and integrated
domains are best.

So, the shared principles, simply are:

1) Injunction
2) Apprehension
3) Consensual validation

More simply put, you do something (#1), you experience something (#2), you
share and compare what has been experienced (#3). This is strongly aligned
with three major school of philosophy of science: (#1) Kuhn's paradigms (the
strict sense in which Kuhn used the term, as a practice or exemplar) which
insists on actual methods as a lynchpin of the coherency of science; (#2)
Empiricism, which insists on the experiential basis of data generation; (#3)
Popperian fasification, which insists on the ability to falsify any
knowledge proposition (i.e if you cannot construct a means of showing an
assertion of knowledge to be false, that knowledge cannot be falsified, or,
demonstrated to be valid or invalid).

Simple examples:

Science

1) You look in a telescope

2) You apprehend patches of light and dark

3) You share your experience/s with your colleagues who have done the same.

Religion

1) You sit in meditation and count your breaths

2) You apprehend contours of your mental stream

3) You share your experience/s with your colleagues who have done the same.

These are very simplified examples, but the features are essentially the
same, and as the practice evolves, the refinement of the apprehensions grows
(on average), and the consensual validation becomes progressively more
stringent--you have to pass certain tests among a community of the adequate
or your apprehensions and interpretations are rebuffed.

And here are the two main points of all this:

1) Consensual validation is reserved for those who have actually completed
that first principle (the practice/exemplar/injunction) and had the
experience generated by that injunction--anyone else is not adequate to the
vote. And this goes both ways--until you have completed the scientific
practice (whether scientific or religious), you have no business weighing in
amongst the community of practitioners who have engaged in those
practices--you are not qualified to vote (so to speak) on the validity of
teh knowledge. 

Now, you might disagree with the importance of, the quality of, the relative
merits of the knowledge generated by a group of practitioners, but these are
all observer only, not participant-observer perspectives. A particularly
strong branch of science (scientism) has made an attempt to assert that the
observer-only perspective is the only or the most valid perspective, but
this attempt has been shown to be, while partially important, ultimately a
failure in that it privileges a particular perspective without warrant when
it attempts to address different domains.

The idea here is that different practices enact different contours of
knowledge, and in order to assert the relative merits between any two
practices, one must first engage in those practices to adequately compare.
And as more complex communities evolve around these practices, a
developmental premise is important in determining which stages of practice
are comparable between communities. The first is inter-communal, the second
intra-communal, and both are important. 

2) Science and religion are dimensions of humanity that live in us and as
us. That relation may be strained in various ways, but it already resides in
us and as us. The search for reconciliation of these endeavors, these
communities, is in many ways an effort at reconciling dimensions of our own
selves. It is social conflict as well, of course, but it is also an aspect
of alienation that lives in us and in this ongoing discussion.

All for now,

Kurt

-----Original Message-----
From: Jill Quisenberry.
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 3/31/2005 11:10 AM
Subject: Re: FW  NYTimes op ed

ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology
Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
institutions.
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In a message dated 3/31/2005 12:28:15 PM Central Standard Time,  
[log in to unmask] writes:

If the  scientific method is out of the mainstream in our country it is
time 
to take a  stronger stand against the effort to undermine empirical
reality in 
favor of  dogma.



Ofcourse the nature of science is such that the notion of any  one true 
scientific method being carried out by "purely objective"  scientists
should be 
brought in to question as well :-) I believe that the  theory of
evolution is the 
best way that we now have of explaining how life  developed on this
earth 
exactly because it is falsifiable. Unfortunately, the  religious right
have 
grabbed on to this falsifiability argument to stake a claim  for their
beliefs, 
which they will not allow to be held up for  scutiny.
The main problem is when people don't want to hear the other side  of an

argument, right or wrong.  Good science should always be willing to
lend a 
critical ear.
 
                                                    Janine  Prillaman

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