Can Science and Religion Save Each Other? (Part 2)

by Deepak Chopra, MD

 

Science is used to being dominant, and religion is used to being defensive–these are familiar poses for two worldviews, the one being on the rise, the other on the decline. Generally when an entire belief system is on the decline, it steadily disappears. There’s no need to believe that the king’s touch can cure disease once modern medicine appears, and no need for bleeding to be a medical practice when its usefulness is experimentally invalidated. But the model of progress that substitutes automobiles for horse-drawn carriages doesn’t apply to religion. It may lose adherents who accept the argument that scientific rationality is superior to faith. The values of modern secular society are constantly on the rise.

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Can Science and Religion Save Each Other?

by Deepak Chopra, MD

 

A flurry of controversy surrounded the astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson two weeks ago when he took a jab at religion in the name of science. It began Christmas day with a mischievous tweet: “On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642.” Then deGrasse Tyson felt that he needed to be more pointed in a follow-up tweet: “QUESTION: This year, what do all the world’s Muslims and Jews call December 25th? ANSWER: Thursday.”

 

Angry responses came his way, and in a follow-up blog entry deGrasse Tyson offered this reflection: “Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.” Since he also has a history of declaring that philosophy is useless and an obstacle to progress, this champion of materialism, objectivity, and reason underlined a familiar stance.

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How to Save the World–A Simple Answer

By Deepak Chopra, MD

Around a decade ago, when I first started posting at Huffington Post, one entry considered the world’s four greatest problems. They were over-population, climate change, pandemic disease, and refugeeism. Despite the suffering and fear it creates, terrorism affects far fewer people than these four issues, but if anyone wants to add it to the list, there can be no objection. Compared to a decade ago, all of these problems have worsened. Many observers, along with people in their everyday lives, feel that the world is in total chaos.

 

The greatest factor that fuels chaos is an inability to see a solution. Solutions, if they sound reasonable and have a chance of working, give rise to optimism and a willingness to return to orderly existence. In the absence of a solution, or the prospect of one, irrationality takes over and chaos deepens. Ultimately, chaos fights order not in the world “out there” but in ourselves.

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Will God 2.0 Be Indispensable in Ten Years?

by Deepak Chopra, MD

The primary difficult with God isn’t belief–more than 80% of US responders tell pollsters that they believe God exists. The problem is that God is irrelevant, providing few if any practical benefits in daily life. In an age of faith the circumstances were in God’s favor. When people got sick or died, had a run of bad luck, committed immoral acts, received unexpected rewards, or couldn’t have children–the list of situations was endless–God was invoked to explain why. In one way or another, the deity was interwoven into the fabric of daily life. (more…)

God Is the New Physics

By Deepak Chopra, MD

 

When spirituality and physics started to be linked, many scientists called it the use of metaphor. It couldn’t literally be true that there was a Tao of Physics that linked quantum mechanics to ancient Chinese philosophy. At best there might be a weak link–God and the new physics–the way one might say God and DNA. With a little imagination, the two could be joined, but there was no possibility that God could intrude into hard science. There might be a gene for faith (so the speculation went), yet physics is couched almost purely in the language of mathematics, and no matter how you cut it, God isn’t numbers.

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