Amit Goswami, Ph.D. » elementary particles

Can Science and Religion be Integrated?

ri — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:15:10 +0000

Can science and religion be integrated? What comes to mind immediately is that religions themselves cannot agree with one another whereas science is basically monolithic. How can there even be trade between the two, let alone integration?

First, it is only a perception that religions are pluralistic and science is not. Science is monolithic only so far as science of matter--physics and chemistry--is concerned. Psychology, the science of the psyche, has three different paradigms--behavioral-cognitive consisting of hard science orientation, depth psychology consisting of Freudian psychoanalysis and Jungian analytical psychology and their derivatives with psychotherapy orientation, and humanistic-transpersonal-yoga psychology with positive mental health orientation. Both the later paradigms of psychology acknowledge downward causation and subtle bodies in some form or other. Medicine has the conventional allopathic medicine and also alternative medicine practices that complement it. A prominent part of alternative medicine is Eastern medicine that emphasizes subtle energies called variously as prana, chi, and ki. And biology is in transition right now. The materialist biology is highly developed but with some unsolved (maybe unsolvable) problems. Alternative biology is biology that sees life as the handiwork of a purposive designer with the power of downward causation; but at present it is so poorly developed that hardly anyone can call it a genuine alternative biology.

The Signatures of the Divine

ri — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:21:34 +0000

Jesus lamented, The kingdom of God is everywhere, but people don’t see it. Well, the evidence is subtle; it is easy for ordinary people to miss it. But scientists are special people; they are experts in deciphering subtleties of evidence. Why have they been missing the signatures of the divine? The Nobel laureate physicist Richard [...]

Kennedy Gave Us the Moon, Can you take us farther, Mr. President?

ri — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:36:34 +0000

Dear President Obama, Just a few months ago you ran on a platform of change; real change you said, change in which we can believe. Well, how many changes have you made which can be considered real? Something so real that it can be believed in ? Something so real that it might inspire us [...]