Science and religion’s surprising similarities

This page offers three interconnected essays inspired by a Session 3 Ra comment:

The vibratory distortion of sound, faith, is perhaps one of the stumbling blocks between those of what we may call the infinite path and those of the finite proving/understanding.

You are precisely correct in your understanding of the congruency of faith and intelligent infinity; however, one is a spiritual term, the other more acceptable perhaps to the conceptual framework distortions of those who seek with measure and pen. 3.9

and a similarly-themed excerpt from the excellent Spirit Wisdom channeling by Ramón Stevens.

Black swans

What is the difference between science and religion? Both seek knowledge. Both require faith. Discerning between the two arenas is a question addressed by philosophy: Philosophers of science have attempted to demarcate science from other knowledge-seeking endeavors, in particular religion, writes philosopher Helen De Cruz.

The two key differences between science and religion are the content area with which each concerns itself and whether hypotheses are falsifiable, per De Cruz.

Content area is a commonly accepted delineation. [S]cience concerns the natural world, whereas religion concerns the supernatural world and its relationship to the natural, De Cruz explains. The methodological naturalist approach to science addresses only the empirical: that which can be observed or perceived. Topics such as gods, mythology, astrology, the soul, afterlife, miracles, prana, karma, and ego are regarded as non-science and are simply not addressed.

The other key difference between science and religion is falsifiability, as proposed by philosopher Karl Popper. In Conjectures and Refutations, Popper grapples with the question of When should a theory be ranked as scientific? and concludes that A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. A non-scientific theory is not thereby found to be unimportant, or insignificant, or meaningless, Popper clarifies, citing Marx’s theory of history, Freud’s psycho-analysis, and Alfred Adler’s so-called individual psychology as examples, but a non-scientific theory is not scientific or empirical. P.33–38

Falsification is particularly important because scientific ideas are never empirically verifiable, Popper asserts in the Logic of Scientific Discovery [emphasis in original]: P.18 ideas can be negated but not affirmed, in Popper’s belief. Following philosopher David Hume (and previously, ancient Greek and Indian philosophers), Popper rejects inductive reasoning — the basis of the scientific method — as inherently unreliable, a view consistent with Ra’s comment that

This is not a dimension of knowing, even subjectively. 61.9

Inductive reasoning extrapolates from the specific to the general, from the narrow to the broad, from the past to the future, from the observed to the unobserved. Hume first raised the question of whether such reasoning was actually reliable, a philosophical question now called the problem of induction.

The problem of induction is illustrated by a famous metaphor, originally a Latin phrase dating to the 2nd century. Something believed to be so rare as to not exist was referred to as rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno, a bird as rare upon the earth as a black swan. The comparison hinges on the Old World presumption that since only white swans had been observed, all swans must be white. And then, Dutch explorers visited Australia in 1697 and saw the impossible black swan.

Inductive reasoning extrapolates from the specific to the general, from the narrow to the broad, from the past to the future, from the observed to the unobserved. Every observed swan is white, therefore every swan is white. Or, ten ‘heads’ coin flips in a row means the next must be heads also. Bertrand Russell offers a visceral example in The Problems of Philosophy:

Domestic animals expect food when they see the person who usually feeds them. We know that all these rather crude expectations of uniformity are liable to be misleading. The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.

Like scientific theories, religious and metaphysical beliefs cannot be affirmed. However, while a scientific theory (to be considered scientific, in Popper’s view) must be falsifiable by empirical evidence to the contrary, religious and metaphysical beliefs can be neither proven nor disproven since they are not based in physicality. As they do not seek with measure and pen, 3.9 these beliefs surpass science in Ra’s continuum of understanding: they are held in faith or intuition, rather than (actual or believed) proof.

A leap of faith

In Ra’s continuum of understanding, the faith that elevates religious belief above science’s proof is also one of the stumbling blocks between those of what we may call the infinite path and those of the finite proving understanding. 3.9

The evolution beyond science requires openness to ideas which can be neither proven nor disproven empirically. This is the release of orange ray need for physical evidence. This is where faith comes into play. When we trust wholeheartedly, with neither proof nor doubt, we open ourselves to the higher rays.

Like the Fool archetype on the Choice tarot card (and Indy in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), we must step into the expanse, knowing that the bridge will appear at our feet. One great aspect of this [Fool] archetype is the aspect of faith, the walking into space without regard for what is to come next, Ra says. This is, of course, foolish but is part of the characteristic of the spiritual neophyte. 67.30

This is the leap of faith. The bridge is the green ray, the great transitional ray, 54.31 the center from which third-density beings may springboard, shall we say, towards infinite intelligence. 15.12 In a translation of Rumi’s mystical poetry,

As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.

The concept of faith is expansive and at times contradictory. The faith that Ra associates with the finite path 3.9 is the word’s religious sense, which Oxford defines as based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. This apprehension (anxiety or fear that something bad or unpleasant will happen) is a stumbling block, Ra states, the point at which the spiritual neophyte has loosened his reliance on the (perceived) security of orange ray’s (perceived) evidence, but does not yet possess the blue ray’s true faith in the unseen and unprovable.

Without blue, there is no green ray bridge. Just as with paint, blue must be brought to yellow to make green.

Ra’s stumbling block metaphor references skandalon, a biblical concept. Physically, a skandalon is a stumbling block or a trap-stick, a bated stick holding open a trap, tempting prey to touch it, and causing the trap to shut on them. Figuratively, a stumbling block or skandalon is a temptation to sin or to lose faith. The original Hebrew concept was of a noose or snare. The Greek word lives on in English’s scandal and slander.

It it appropriate that Ra, as channeled through Carla’s mind, invokes a biblical metaphor regarding faith, and ironic that in this case, it is the apparently faithful who stumble. Amid the Ra material’s two dozen mentions of faith, only here does Ra speak of its weakness. I wonder whether the religious context and the veiled wording served as a sleight of hand to slip through a cautionary comment about faith, enabling Ra to communicate — through a devoted Christian — that this expression of faith is not that of the infinite path. 3.9

The religious sense of faith is not the faith that moves mountains, Ra says. 3.9 It is not the faith that involves strong conviction or complete trust. It is faith as an insurance policy, a safety net, hope as a bandaid for doubt. It is the no man’s land in which the spiritual neophyte begins to step into the expanse but does not yet trust that the bridge will appear. It is the limbo between proving and knowing.

Faith in science

The finite proving understanding… of those who seek with measure and pen 3.9 is exemplified by the scientific method, in which a hypothesis is regarded as knowledge when an observable result reliably follows from a set of conditions. The claimed evidence is empirical: it can be observed by the senses and measured.

And thus is the limitation of science and of all belief that relies on evidence: it is anchored in physicality. The proving level of understanding 3.9 can never transcend the realm of effects. It is blind to true cause, which is always metaphysical and thus imperceptible by the physical senses.

In their introduction to The Law of One: Book I, Ra channelers Don Elkins and Carla Rueckert comment on the impossibility of proving. In an observation consistent with Ra’s statement, 3.9 Carla notes that a desire for proof will inevitably lead to null results and voided experiments. P.7 Senior scientists would be the first to agree that there is no such thing as an absolute scientific explanation of anything, Don adds. Science is, rather, a method or tool of prediction, relating one or more observations to each other. P.14

Because of its reliance on physicality, science’s evidence is ultimately unreliable. In recognition of this deficit, philosopher Karl Popper wrote, In the empirical sciences, which alone can furnish us with information about the world we live in, proofs do not occur, if we mean by proof an argument which establishes once and for ever the truth of a theory.

In its purest form, science is an accurate measuring of patterns of effects. The original sense of the word science, from the Latin scire, was to separate one thing from another or to cut, divide. When unity is the ultimate truth, can we gain understanding by studying ever-smaller separations? The accuracy of scientific claims relies on narrow conditions. For example, a statement that water freezes at 0°C or 32°F must then be conditioned by further separations or variables, such as if atmospheric pressure = 1 atm and unless the water contains salt, sugar, or dust particles.

The greater our awareness of and expression of the unity underlying the apparent diversity, the greater the intelligence to which we open ourselves. This is flipped in the modern age, in which science — the attempt to understand through division — is revered as knowledge itself.

As philosopher Thomas Kuhn observed, most ‘science’ is actually not the gradual accumulation of information. Instead, science follows a pattern in which a consensus view faces increasing anomalistic or contradicting evidence. Though they [scientists] may begin to lose faith and then to consider alternatives, they do not renounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis, Kuhn wrote. [O]nce it has achieved the status of paradigm, a scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available to take its place. P.77 Does that sound like a model of truth, or is it an example of clinging to doctrine? Is this revered Science, or is it the definition of confirmation bias?

Scientific ‘knowledge’ does not grow incrementally; it is upended in extraordinary episodes in which that shift of professional commitments occurs. Kuhn referred to these scientific revolutions as paradigm shifts P.6 brought forth by a leap of faith:

The man who embraces a new paradigm at an early stage must often do so in defiance of the evidence provided by problem-solving. He must, that is, have faith that the new paradigm will succeed with the many large problems that confront it, knowing only that the older paradigm has failed with a few. A decision of that kind can only be made on faith. P.158

The observation and experimentation necessary to test a theory requires faith in that theory’s prospects. Science and religion are often seen as incompatible, but as noted by Kuhn, faith has its place in both.

Insecurity blanket

A vengeful God, or an indifferent universe? A fallen soul, or a mortal body? Judgement, or nothingness? In the predominant narratives of Western culture, security is nowhere to be found. Even in the Ra material, the truth that all is complete and whole and perfect 4.20 is overshadowed by distortions like psychic attack and making the grade. In the following excerpt from Spirit Wisdom (a Seth-like work which we recommend in its entirety), channel Ramón Stevens speaks of this primal struggle. P.172–3

Western culture offers not one but two cosmological perspectives on the origin of life. In one camp, the Judeo-Christian, the universe was created by God, an occasionally wrathful, occasionally benevolent creator who lives apart from His creation. In the Christian tradition, one is born in sin—carrying the sin-drenched legacy of the first human couple—and only through accepting Christ as one’s personal savior can one find release from the inevitable descent to hell which is the fate of the unbaptized.

In the scientific camp, the universe is a meaningless accident, a result of uncountable chance events randomly coagulating into life inexplicably endowed with consciousness. Life’s only purpose is to conquer one’s competitors and produce as many offspring as conceivable, suffusing the species’ gene pool with your chromosomal heritage.

Whatever their surface difficulties, science and religion agree on certain fundamentals: you must not look inside yourself for life’s meaning; you must not think of yourself as inherently divine; you must not rest secure in the knowledge that your consciousness is eternal and indestructible; you must not look upon yourself as a unique and irreplaceable contribution to the sweep of human and global history.

Western culture is founded on existential insecurity. You don’t know who you are. You don’t know why you are here. You don’t know the underlying meaning of life. You don’t understand the role you are to play in the drama. You don’t feel your divinity pulsing in every vein. You don’t recognize your kinship with the natural world. You are cut off, atomized, alone.

If this existential insecurity is the deepest core idea upon which the psyche is built, flavoring life’s every moment and thought, then one is never truly secure. The most basic questions have not been answered. Like a noxious haze, this insecurity blankets even the most sublime moments of love, connection, and inspiration. Even the sacred bond between parent and child is sullied if the parent does not feel the divinity pulsing within himself and recognize it in the child’s wondering, curious, loving eyes.