www.nysun.com/article/19969?access=278096
The Coming Ferrer Surge In a 1987 lecture on "The Burden of Skepticism," the astronomer Carl Saga n opined: In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a real ly good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually chan ge their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientist s are human and change is sometimes painful. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. Listen up, all ye who insist on squeezing the round peg of science into t he square hole of religion; if religious claims are not consonant with s cientific findings, it is wisest to err on the side of science, which em ploys self-correcting machinery designed to weed out error, agenda, and bias. Not only do scientists change their minds in the face of contradic tory evidence, they do so regardless of the religion, race, or nationali ty of the scientific colleagues who are doing the contradicting. Science is international, or non-national, in this sense, a characteristi c His Holiness says is in harmony with the teachings of Buddhism. "Becau se I am an internationalist at heart," the Dalai Lama explains, "one of the qualities that has moved me most about scientists is their amazing w illingness to share knowledge with each other without regard for nationa l boundaries. Even during the Cold War, when the political world was pol arized to a dangerous degree, I found scientists from the Eastern and We stern blocs willing to communicate in ways the politicians could not eve n imagine." In my 1999 book, "How We Believe," I outlined a three-tiered model of the relationship of science and religion: the "conflicting worlds" mode l, in which science and religion are at war and one must choose between them; the "same worlds" model, in which science and religion are in harmony and one may have both simultaneously; and the "separate worl ds" model, in which science and religion are different methods to deal w ith different areas of human concern. Since that time, hundreds of books have been published in the field of science and religion studies, which has blossomed with its own journals and magazines, college courses, sch olarly conferences, and even an annual million-dollar cash prize for the individual who most contributes to uniting science and religion (the Te mpleton Prize). I thus approached this book with trepidation - what else can be said on t his subject, especially by someone with no background whatsoever in scie nce? Yet, as I read I grew to respect the author, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14t h Dalai Lama, who at the age of 6 was enthroned as the reincarnation of his predecessor, the 13th Dalai Lama, in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. B orn to a peasant family in a small village called Takster in northeaster n Tibet, the Dalai Lama ended up in an exile that brought him in contact with many of the world's leading scientists. He talks about his youthful encounters with science, especially his meeti ngs with some of the world's leading scientists, including physicists Ca rl von Weizsacker and David Bohm, and the philosopher of science Karl Po pper. From these encounters, as well as his Buddhist studies, the Dalai Lama found a way to harmonize science and religion, even while recognizi ng (and respecting) their differences. Both science and Buddhism, he poi nts out, share a strong empirical basis: "Buddhism must accept the facts - whether found by science or found by contemplative insights. If, when we investigate something, we find there is reason and proof for it, we must acknowledge that as reality - even if it is in contradiction with a literal scriptural explanation that has held sway for many centuries or with a deeply held opinion or view." Instead of filtering scientific findings through the sieve of his religio n, the Dalai Lama approaches science with humility and openness. "As my comprehension of science has grown, it has gradually become evident to m e that, insofar as understanding the physical world is concerned, there are many areas of traditional Buddhist thought where our explanations an d theories are rudimentary when compared with those of modern science." This book is "not an attempt to unite science and spirituality," he expl ains, "but an effort to explore two important human disciplines for the purpose of developing a more holistic and integrated way of understandin g the world." He begins his exploration by equating science with the worldview of "scie ntific materialism," which "seems to be a common unexamined presuppositi on" that includes "a belief in an objective world, independent of the co ntingency of its observers. It assumes that the data being analyzed with in an experiment are independent of the preconceptions, perceptions, and experience of the scientist analyzing them." Most work ing scientists do make this assumption when conducting their experiments , but they are well aware that their preconceptions can color their anal ysis and interpretation. Getting an accura te reading on reality is another matter entirely. The Dalai Lama's other bugbear is scientific reductionism, and here I fee l he has set up something of a straw man. "The view that all aspects of reality can be reduced to matter and its various particles is, to my min d, as much a metaphysical position as the view that an organizing intell igence created and controls reality." This view, he fears, leads to nihi lism, and with it the loss of subjective purpose and meaning. "The dange r then is that human beings may be reduced to nothing more than biologic al machines, the products of pure chance in the random combination of ge nes, with no purpose other than the biological imperative of reproductio n" I do not fault the Dalai Lama for challenging this view of science, which does make it difficult to explain such phenomena as the origins of the universe, life, sentience, and consciousness (each of which receive indi vidual chapter treatments in his book), and is held by a great many peop le, both within and outside of the scientific community. Yet the solutio n to these and other problems, in my opinion, is through the new science s of complexity, emergence, and self-organization. The Dalai Lama does n ot go this route, instead turning to certain Buddhist principles, such a s karma. Karma, he explains, is easily misunderstood by Westerners. It has to do w ith causal action, but "it is erroneous to think of karma as some transc endental unitary entity that acts like a god in a theistic system or a d eterminist law by which a person's life is fated." In fact, from a scien tific perspective, karma is just a metaphysical assumption, but "no more so than the assumption that all of life is material and originated out of pure chance." Although he admits that the Darwinian theory of evoluti on "gives us a fairly coherent account of the evolution of human life on earth," the Dalai Lama also believes "that karma can have a central rol e in understanding the origination of what Buddhism calls 'sentience,' t hrough the media of energy and consciousness." In Buddhism, the most fundamental unit of matter is prana,a vital en ergy indistinguishable from consciousness. Since not only sentience, but the origins of life, consciousness, and morality are inadequately explained by science, it i s useful to employ the notion of karma. Here I am afraid the Dalai Lama proffers the same empty explanations as t he creationists and Intelligent Design theorists in what we call the "Go d of the Gaps." Wherever there is a gap in scientific explanation - the origins of life, sentience, consciousness, morality - this is where God, or karma, intervened. But what happens to God/karma when science fills in the gap? it is just a linguist ic place-filler until science can discover the actual cause. By analogy, cosmologists proffer something called "dark energy" and "dark matter" t o account for certain anomalies in their data. They admit that "dark matter" is just a convenient label for something they have yet to discover. When creationists or Buddhists spea k of God or karma, they mean it as th...
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