Turn Right at the Intersection of Science and Religion
Today’s USA TODAY ran a story about how meditation helps brain functions. It really isn’t anything earth-shattering, but I thought the last paragraph was notable:On Saturday, the exiled leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, spoke to neuroscientists, urging them to continue their crucial work on meditation. Such studies may help identify practices that will help people rein in negative emotions, he says. More than 500 scientists signed a petition against the Dalai Lama's talk: Many said they didn't want to mix religion with science.
The last sentence spoke volumes to me, as it is indicative of the scientific community’s unwillingness to even acknowledge that there may be points where science and religion intersect. It seems to me that a true scientist would go wherever the data leads him, regardless of any religious implications the data may present along the way. To rule out something a priori because it may carry some religious overtones strikes me as neither objective nor scientific.
Is everything religious antithetical to science? Such a proposition seems untenable to me, yet this seems to be the operative assumption made here. The way I see it, this knee-jerk reaction against anything having a religious overtone is nothing more than an exchange of one bias for another, and unworthy of even being associated with science and the scientific method.
If all these scientists, and there appears to be at least 500 of them, are so threatened by the intersection of religion and science, why aren’t they doing research on this very same subject to conclusively demonstrate their conviction that science and religion are two such distinct fields that never the twain shall meet?
posted by dave @ Monday, November 14, 2005
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