Introduction: A Spiritual Approach to Evolution

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 W W W. T I K K U N . O R G T I K K U N 33 DAVID BYGOTT Introduction: ASpiritualApproachtoEvolution by MichaelLerner D on’t worry, we are not about to join the creationists with their rejection of evolution and insistence that God planted all those dinosaur bones to test your faith. The set of articles you are about to read are written by people who accept the notion that the earth evolved in the past five billion years in roughly the waysthatcurrentevolutionarybiologistsdescribeit,butsomeofthemarguethattheforcedriving evolutionisnotadequatelydescribedwithinthetermsofcontemporaryscientism. We don’t expect that reading these essays is going to be easy on you. The fact is that most liberals and progressives, in fact, most people who have completed high school, have been heavily indoctrinatedintothedominantreligionofthishistoricalperiod,thereligionofscientism,and ascanbeexpected,willfeeldeeplyuneasy—ifnotfeelingthattheyareoutrightdisloyal—ifthey consider the possibility that another worldview is not only possible but plausible. 34 T I K K U N W W W. T I K K U N . O R G N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 Why We Strongly Support Science But please keep in mind that we are strongly supportive of the enterprise of science itself. Science is one of the great advances in human history, and the information it has produced through careful empirical observation and measurement has allowed us to cure many diseases, improve the material conditions of our lives, and gain insight into the complexity of the universe. Science offers us a degree of control over the natural world and hence a heightened sense of security in the face of real dangers. We are strong believers in the need for increased funding for science and for freeing science from its current subservience to military ends (to which our government deflects scientific research by offering funding from the bloated defense department budget)andfromthecapitalistmarketplace(whichoftendeflects scientific research toward the needs of corporations to make short-termprofitswithoutregardtothewell-beingoftheearthor most of its inhabitants). We advocate for more monies dedicated to environmental science, which has already helped us understand the irrationality of the current ways we treat the earth, and toward health promotion and illness prevention (including prevention of the environmental impacts by corporations that increase susceptibility to a wide variety of illnesses, including cancer and Alzheimer’s disease). Taughtcorrectly,sciencecanalsobeastimulustoaheightened sense of awe and wonder at the grandeur and beauty of the universe . Read The Faith of Scientists by Nancy H. Frankenberry (Princeton University Press, 2008) to get a sense of the range of scientists who have developed an inner spiritual life. As Einstein famously quipped, “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”One can be a passionate advocate of science , as I am, and yet be a strong opponent of scientism, just as I am a strong advocate for the right of Jews to a state in the Middle East and yet a strong opponent of creating a religion of Zionism. It is similar to how one can be a strong advocate for egalitarianism and democratic control of the economy without being a communist in the sense that existed in various totalitarian societies of the twentieth century, or a strong lover of the United States without being a believer that our current economic and political system is just or desirable. Scientism: When Science Becomes a Religion Scientism is the belief that nothing is real and nothing can be known in the world except that which can be observed and measured. A person who adopts a scientistic perspective believes that science can in principle answer every question SCIENCE&SPIRIT HTTP://BLOG.CASTLEINTHEAIR.BIZ/ This cartoon appeared in The Freethinkers’ Pictorial Text-Book (1898 edition). N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 W W W. T I K K U N . O R G T I K K U N 35 that can be answered. Any claim about the world that cannot be validated, at least in principle, or at least falsified on the basis of empirical data or measurement is...