Science and Faith
I have been watching the new Cosmos series with Neil deGrasse Tyson. This program is a tour-de-force of scientific knowledge. It sets aside belief based on other possibilities especially when it talks about the origins of life. At one point, Neil talks about the possibility of Intelligent Design, but does not give credit to Creationism. And to go further into that, one would have to reference Ben Stein's documentary "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" where they show a huge difference between the two, yet neither side will say Intelligent Design belongs to them. But I am not here to debate religious theories. I want to talk about science, to a point.
I love science. I love how we dissect things and figure out how they work. Look at the human body. As a former computer programmer, I can understand programming code that compares things, makes decisions, and then makes certain things happen based on those decisions. Science shows us how our bodies do the same thing, but decisions are made on a chemical basis, not computer code (or so I think).
But following science, we have developed wonderful technologies (including the computer I am writing this article on). But science reaches a point where things become 'unknown'. They come up with the best theories to explain them, but that is still a best guess. What bothers me is the 'scientific community' and people who believe them accept these guesses as fact. The problem is that while we have a great theory on what a black hole is, and may have mathematics behind it, we won't really know what it is until we go out there and touch the bloody thing. And scientists, who in my opinion, should be open-minded, tend to look at things they can't prove as bunk.
I work with a lot of things science can't, or won't understand. There is no way of testing it, so they say it is fake. At the same time, I have seen the things I do help people. And I am not just talking about energy work like Reiki. I am also talking about meditation and mediumship.
I have seen people come in suffering from pain, and walk out pain free after nothing more than a Reiki session. Was that magic? Science? Hocus pocus? Or did we just imagine it happened? I have seen people help themselves during a meditative journey. I have seen them go in, and come back relieved of problems, or having solutions to problems. (And keep in mind that when I take people into a meditation, I take them in, let them go do what they need to on their own, and then bring them back out. This way I don't need to know the details, or to tell them what to do. They get that guidance on their own.) This is also something science can't prove.
I have also seen people feel better after hearing from loved ones that have passed. I see them get advice from people they know. (And the style of mediumship that is done is called Evidential Mediumship where evidence is brought forward to prove that the medium actually has the person they claim they do.) Now mediumship has been under fire for generations since before Houdini exposed many as fakes, and yes, there are a lot of fakes. But that is true of any industry including massage, banking, and stock brokers. And science can not understand this as it is part of energy work. That is where Faith comes in, but faith with a good dose of skepticism.
When I am talking faith, I am not talking religion. Yes, I do believe there is a 'source of all things', and that everyone has a right to believe in what they want to believe in, but faith in this source, in energy, in possibility. Faith opens up doorways to possibilities. But it should be approached with skepticism.
As psychic medium, John Edward says, we should all be skeptics. We should all be saying "prove it to me." In the case of the many types of energy work I do, I have had that happen. I have said "prove it to me" and have seen that proof. And while science can't seem to understand this, faith sees it, sees the proof, and understands. Because of this, I have faith in myself and what the work I do can do to help someone. I have faith in the energies that come through me that actually do the healing work, or the guidance I get during a healing session. I have faith that people will be helped, and I have the proof to overcome the skepticism I approached these things with.
I can think of a couple words that really come into play here. The first is 'balance'. We have to balance science and faith. We have to know that they both have a place. The other word is 'tolerance'. While we balance the two, we have to be tolerant of both. It is when science discards faith because it is not scientific, and faith discards science because it doesn't fall into their beliefs that we have great conflict.
So, yes, I love science. I also love faith. And I love balancing the two. In truth, I feel that if we broke down faith to energies and how they work, we might find that they are very scientific indeed. Balance and tolerance. Those have to be the ruling constraints.