Fundamental non-opposition or the fifth wheel (machine translation)
Is it possible to reconcile science and religion? Unlikely. Science is rational, it seeks explanations of the phenomena of life, seeks out their causes, studies the laws and conditions of what is happening. Religion is irrational, it implies belief in the arbitrary influence of supernatural forces and, therefore, does not believe that all phenomena of life can be explained and their conditionality understood. How to combine these two incompatible views on reality? No way – for they, as was said, are incompatible. An attempt to do this will lead to the loss of one of the sides of its essence: it will result in either a science that has absorbed and demythologized religion, or a science-like religion that puts distorted meaning into scientific concepts.
But they coexist, though competing. Our world provides food for life for both of them. It has both that which creates the basis for science, and that which creates the basis for religion. And more and more often it turns out that the same factors wander from one opposing camp to another: either a religious phenomenon receives a rational scientific explanation, then science makes a discovery, which seems impossible to explain unless the probability of higher forces acting is recognized. This suggests that, no matter how strange it may sound, in reality there is no separation between science and religion. That is, it is imaginary and is fed by misunderstanding. Science refuses to recognize what it is not yet able to study and explain (and sometimes simply discover), and religion refuses to recognize that many phenomena that are still incomprehensible can and should have a rational explanation.
Let science and religion be impossible to reconcile. But maybe there is a third option, combining the features characteristic of both sides, and giving them a single interpretation? Yes, there is such an option. This is the Teaching of the One Temple. While not a religion, it recognizes the existence of phenomena that are usually interpreted as religious, and gives them a rationalistic explanation – albeit from the perspective of a broader rationalism than the rationalism of modern science. This means that it explains such phenomena without reference to the action of supernatural forces, and believes that over time, science will be able to investigate and explain them.
Like everything non-standard, this third option requires the development of an appropriate approach, overcoming certain stereotypes, and just the habit of looking at things from a new angle. At one time, I myself had to face the problem of understanding these realities and adopting a new look. I talked about this in one of my as yet unpublished texts. Below is an appropriate passage. It will help to better understand what is meant by the “third option.”
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When I learned all this from my Master, for a long time I did not leave the feeling of some embarrassment generated by a visible contradiction. On the one hand, something that I never believed in: a certain Creator, the act of creating the Universe, and the like. On the other hand, what I recognized and believed from the school bench: evolution, strict causal relationships, and so on. All this hardly fit into my head – because personally it was difficult for me to link such realities within the framework of one consistent system. The point was the stereotype that the idea of the Creator who created the world belongs to the field of supernatural, irrational, and is characteristic of religious consciousness, and therefore by definition it is not combined with a rational scientific approach and the idea of evolution. Moreover, evolution, mandatory for the Creator himself. It took me a while to overcome the barrier in my own mind. After all, the problem was not in the complexity of the information itself for understanding, but in the fact that the apparent contradiction prevented, so to speak, from shaking it. A kind of rejection arose, which can be approximately described as follows: if I do not believe in the supernatural, considering it unconditionally impossible, then how can I seriously take the idea of the Creator, how can I take this information into mental and spiritual work? But when I managed to understand that the creation of the world by the Creator does not have to be a supernatural act, everything fell into place, and the rest began to fit perfectly into the scheme I was taught.
Here’s how it happens: habitual stereotypes, ingrained in consciousness, prevent us from seeing reality as it is. The matter, of course, is well-known; I’m not trying to present this as my discovery. It’s just that the situation when I came across this problem not in theory, but in practice, and in practice I overcame it, taught me a lot. I think this was one of the key moments of my journey. I then did not just learn something new, but broke an important stereotype of perception – without which it would be impossible to understand the Teaching.
Why do I focus on this point – so that even moved away from him for the main topic? Because the problem of this stereotype is undoubtedly relevant not only for me. It is he, as I said, that can most of all interfere with understanding the Doctrine. Just because it does not even allow you to start a serious study of it. For people with a scientific mindset, the circumstance that the Doctrine recognizes the existence of the Creator who created the Universe can cause rejection; for people inclined to put the supernatural above the rational, it is unacceptable to say that the Creator who created everything is not omnipotent, that he also obeys the laws of evolution, and that the creation of the Universe was caused precisely by his evolutionary necessity. That is, we see here a clash of two types of worldview: scientific and religious. Their opposition, as a conflict of rational and mystical consciousness, in different variations, is one of the leitmotifs of the whole history of mankind. However, the Teaching reconciles them, showing that the idea of evolution is fully combined with the idea of the Creator. Moreover: these ideas complement and explain, substantiate each other. And, of course, this integration is not limited to just the two ideas mentioned. The doctrine contains many similar points and aspects. It all as a whole can be correctly perceived only in this way – through the understanding that seemingly supernatural things and phenomena can be explained from a rational point of view, and that this latter, in turn, should not force one to reject in advance that which rooted stereotypes perceived as manifestations of supernatural powers.
When studying the Doctrine, you periodically catch yourself thinking that in one aspect or another it resembles religion, because it describes things that science does not recognize, but which, however, have undoubted similarities with religious doctrines. In fact, this similarity is of the same order as, say, the religious view of lightning. Religions considered it to be a supernatural phenomenon, an attribute of an angry God or gods, intended to intimidate the rebellious and punish the objectionable. However, such a perception of lightning does not deprive it of materiality, does not turn it into a figment of fantasy, into a product of mysticized imagination. She really exists, she is real. And the day came when science gave this natural phenomenon a rational explanation. We see that the phenomenon itself is, but there is nothing supernatural in it. So the Doctrine speaks of many things that at first glance go beyond the rational: about the Creator and the creation of the Universe, about the world of energy and the world of Spirit, about the elementary gods, about life after death and rebirths, and so on. However, it itself emphasizes that all this belongs to the sphere of the natural, rational, and, therefore, accessible to scientific knowledge. Therefore, a person studying the Doctrine needs to be able to approach the material from precisely such positions – that is, to understand that the things that seemingly religious in nature, about which it talks, are not really such, and at the same time really exist. To develop such a perception in yourself may not be so simple, and it may not come out right away, but it is necessary. Otherwise, a bias in one direction or another is inevitable: either denying the possibility of the existence of such things, or interpreting them in a mystical manner. Both destroy the integrity of the perception of the Doctrine and fatally distort its meaning.
Yes: Doctrine speaks of many things that science is not yet aware of. But this is a common thing when science does not know about the existence of something, or else knows, but cannot explain. The time will come, and she will find out and explain. The doctrine can very much help her in this, indicating guidelines, prompting cause-effect relationships, giving logical explanations for incomprehensible phenomena. It does not oppose science. On the contrary: the methods of cognition existing in the Teaching and the scientific method are two manifestations of the same thing. They complement each other, and often even merge. In the future, when the Teaching becomes the worldview of all mankind, the border between it (the Teaching) and a purely scientific approach to the knowledge of the world will be completely erased, and they will visibly merge into one. In essence, they are one and the same now – but for science this is less obvious than for the Teaching, and it will have to wait for the recognition of this fact.
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As a final summary, I add the following. It is customary to talk about the fundamental opposition of science and religion. In the case of science and Doctrine, we can talk about fundamental opposition. The doctrine not only does not reject the scientific approach to the knowledge of the world, but also maintains that a scientific explanation will be given in due time even to that which science itself does not currently recognize and for which it does not yet imply a scientific justification. We can say that the Doctrine believes in science more than it believes in itself. And in these words there is no irony. They have confidence in the future merger of science and Doctrine, and our willingness to do everything possible for this.
© Atarkhat, 2016