My Spiritual Journey
Born a Scientist
I was born a scientist. This is completely normal and natural, as all human beings are born scientists. We enter this world without the ability to fend for ourselves or instincts that allow us to survive, but instead have a tremendous ability to learn from the world around us. In grade school we are taught that this learning process is called the scientific method, but we use this process to learn from the very beginning.
The formal scientific method is described as follows. We make observations that describe the environment around us, formulate a hypothesis that explains one or more of the observations, use the hypothesis to make a prediction, and (if we are so motivated), perform an experiment to test the prediction. Depending on the result, the hypothesis is modified or discarded, or reformulated as a theory. A baby is already using this learning process to meet its most basic needs, and only gets better at it with age. Professional scientists are still using the scientific method as adults, but just think more formally about the process and have more sophisticated tools at their disposal.
Discovering Science
As a child, I was fascinated by science. I had a chemistry set throughout grade school, and was routinely performing experiments. My bedroom was wired with antennas and various gizmos, because I so frequently built radios and other electronic projects. I was a voracious reader about nature and space and anything else that satisfied my appetite for scientific topics. As long as I can remember, I aspired to be a professional scientist when I grew up.
All human beings, to varying degrees, have the ability to be taught by other human beings. This is important, as it allows us to benefit directly from their learning, and is how any generation of people passes its knowledge down to future generations. The whole system of formal education is built on this learning process, with students in their rows of desks facing the teacher in front of the classroom. The problem with this learning process is that it requires an element of faith. The learner must believe that the teacher is teaching truth. I was a good student, but my comfort zone was in the scientific method. I knew that it is science that could make sense of the world around me.
I went to a college preparatory high school with a strong academic program. I took all of the science courses that I could schedule; psychology, sociology, biology, chemistry, physics, and advanced chemistry, and enjoyed them all. The school also encouraged all its students to be involved in sports and extracurricular activities, and one of the more popular activities was science projects. I spent a year on a biology project, looking for evidence in the courtship rituals of fruit flies of a mechanism by which evolution occurs, and a year on a chemistry project, searching for substances that impede the catalyzed decomposition of vitamin C in an orange-flavored breakfast drink. By the time I graduated from high school, I was sure that I was destined to be a research chemist. While I was in college, I thrived in the chemistry program. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and had a job waiting for me as a research scientist in a corporate research center, knowing exactly where my career was going to take me. Most importantly, I knew the power of the scientific method.
The Role of Science
Richard Dawkins is a scientist who participates in highly argumentative public discourse on the evils of religious faith. He explains how mainstream American religions encourage people to believe falsehoods, to be satisfied with inadequate explanations which really aren't explanations, and to label the things they don't understand as mysteries. He says this is particularly bad because the truth, the real explanations, the scientific explanations, are so beautiful and so elegant. With his talent for clear and graceful writing, he's done much to explain science to non-scientists, and to show that the discourse should not center around the limits of science, but around the limits of religion.
Richard's response to faith-based religion is with the answer, "There are two ways of responding to mystery. The scientist's way is to see it as a challenge, something they've got to work on, we're really going to try to crack it. But there are others who revel in mystery, who think we were not meant to understand. There's something sacred about mystery that positively should not be tackled. Now, suppose science does have limits. What is the value in giving the label "religion" to those limits? If you simply want to define religion as the bits outside of what science can explain, then we're not really arguing. We're simply using a word, "God," for that which science can't explain. I don't have a problem with that. I do have a problem with saying God is a supernatural, creative, intelligent being. It's simple confusion to say science can't explain certain things; therefore, we have to be religious. To equate that kind of religiousness with belief in a personal, intelligent being, that's confusion. And it's pernicious confusion."
Sources of Wisdom:
The living tradition we share draws from many sources:
... direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
... words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
... teachings from the world's religions which inspire us in our ethical and spiritual life;
... Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
... humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn against the idolatries of the mind and spirit;
... and spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.