My Spiritual Journey
Seeking the Path
I always believed that science and religion were different. Science was a rigorous discipline that provided answers to questions and solutions to problems. Science was the best way to seek truth and understanding about the world around us. And religion extended beyond science, and dealt with matters of faith that couldn't be tested. Religion was about issues to which the scientific method couldn't be applied. Science deals with the physical world. Religion deals with the spiritual world. But I no longer believe this.
I continue to believe that the scientific method is the most powerful thought process ever devised by humans, and find myself wondering about the need to place a boundary around it. Most scientists are optimistic that our overall understandings will grow, and
things that we don't understand today will still have spiritual value when we understand them tomorrow. These scientists don't worship a "God of the Gaps"; they see gaps in our present knowledge as
being opportunities for research.
My interest is applying the scientific method when seeking spiritual truth, and connecting evolutionary biology to contemporary religion.
Science and Religion
We find ourselves in a world that is not directly understandable. We find that we have different interpretations from others about why things happen. Religion is one place that people go, seeking explanations for these things. To some extent, religion is successful at providing explanations. The scientific method attempts to provide another way in which we can reach agreement and understanding about the world around us. Lately, I've been trying to find the boundary between religion and science, if there is in fact such a boundary. I've been inspired by some great thinkers who have been trying to find the same thing. My journey continues.
Epilogue
I grew up Catholic in the 1960's and 1970's, an optimistic and progressive time of second Vatican Council reforms when the Mass was being conducted in the vernacular, priests came out of their Confessionals, and the faithful could receive the Eucharist in their hands. When I grew frustrated with church positions that seemed obsolete on issues that really mattered, my parents would remind me how fast the church was modernizing, given its historic slow pace of change.
Starting in 1980, conservative Pope John Paul II shut down democratic processes at all levels of the hierarchy, ended the productive dialogs taking place between the various stakeholders in Catholicism, and dashed many people's hopes for further reforms. I'm sure this contributed on some way to my decision ultimately to leave the church.
Finding God
Jim Rigby is pastor of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Austin, Tex, who defended the admission of an atheist to his congregation.
"The problem with most religious discussions is that we are usually swimming in a sea of undefined terms. What sense does it make to ask whether God exists if we don't define what we mean by the term "God." For some it's easier to reconcile themselves to the universe by picturing a large person overseeing the process, while others reconcile themselves to the ground by using impersonal elemental images. These approaches are in conflict only when we forget what we are trying to do in the first place, which is to harmonize with the ground of our being."
"Religion is not merely hypothetical opinion about the world. Religion is most essentially a decision to be engaged in a world that cannot be understood and offers no guarantees. 'God' is a symbol of the truth that stands outside our widest context. 'God' is a symbol of the reality deeper than our ultimate concern. 'God' is a symbol of the mystery that lies between the poles of our clearest rational dichotomy. The point is not to affirm the reality of the symbol itself, but to affirm the reality to which the symbol points."
Spiritual Inspiration
The Reverend William Schulz, a Unitarian Universalist minister and former president of both Amnesty International and the Unitarian Universalist Association, wrote the following thoughts.
"Unitarian Universalism affirms that Creation is too grand, complex, and mysterious to be captured in a narrow creed. That is why we cherish individual freedom of belief. At the same time our convictions lead us to other affirmations: That the blessings of life are available to everyone, not just the Chosen or the Saved; That Creation itself is Holy, the earth and all its creatures, the stars in all their glory; That the Sacred or Divine, the Precious and Profound, are made evident not in the miraculous or supernatural, but in the simple and the everyday; That human beings, joined in collaboration with the gifts of grace, are responsible for the planet and its future; That every one of us is held in Creation's hand - a part of the interdependent cosmic web - and hence strangers need not be enemies; That no one is saved until we All are saved, where All means the whole of creation; That the paradox of life is to love it all the more even though we ultimately lose it."
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.