Consciousness and its Role in the War between Science and Religion

Lent 2018: Day 20

Over the weekend, I strayed across an online discussion between scientists and religious zealots (fundamentalist Christian, Orthodox Jew and Muslim alike) about God and evolution. The discussion was relatively cordial, given the controversial subject matter. Tempers fray from time to time, but both sides remain firmly entrenched behind their barricades. “Consciousness resides within the brain!” “You cannot argue with a sacred text that's 3,000/2,000/1,400 years old!” “Science cannot explain x!”  “Your religion cannot explain y!” And so it goes, post after post, hour after hour. Don't these people get bored?

 A few voices try to bridge the gulf. It seems some of them are attempting to set up their own religions, throwing in some scientific words here and some theology there... messy. I did not join in the debate, I was learning more about their mindset than about anything scientific or religious that they were promoting. But a useful lesson; once dug in, it is difficult to change the mind of an intellectually stubborn person.

I believe life is for continual learning, for personal growth, gained through experience and through interaction with others - reading what they have written, or listening to what they are saying. This means the ability for one's thinking on a difficult subject to change, or to sharpen in focus and conviction, on the basis of experience and insight. Indeed, this blog was intended from the outset to record, how over the course of the years, my thinking has matured,

In my personal search for meaning within this universe, I'd set off with a fundamental rule not to challenge accepted scientific fact. Given that quantum mechanics has been proven by a vast number of experimental and theoretical scientists over the past 90 years - to eleven decimal points - it cannot be dismissed. However, science still has a vast amount to prove. Basic things, such as what was before Big Bang? Will the universe continue expanding indefinitely, or will the rate of expansion slow down, stop, and then start collapsing in upon itself? And if so – then what? And if not – then what?  And where is the seat of (human) consciousness? Is consciousness really limited to the brain? What further particles (and properties thereof) remain to be found at subatomic level?

With so many unknowns, it is wrong for scientists to dismiss constructs such as panpsychism as 'unscientific'. Until proved otherwise, it's a theory, like any other, like Sir Roger Penrose's Orch-OR theory (consciousness residing in microtubules within the protein).

Following the arguments online, it became clear to me after a short while that on both sides were people with a particular personality problem – they had a great need to persuade people as to their point of view. They would bang away at one another for hours, while I went out for a walk, did shopping, sorted out the recycling etc – I returned to the debate, and there they were, still arguing. “Is this the right room for an argument?” “I've told you once!” “No you didn't!” “Yes I did...” Monty Python's argument sketch gets the tone right. Why bother marshalling facts, quotes, links etc, and firing them at people who are entirely convinced that they are right and you are wrong? 

Reading Stuart A. Kauffman's Humanity in a Creative Universe is a great antidote to this approach. I seek, I am not interested in entrenching my world view. It must expand, taking in new stuff that's come to light, it must evolve, it must become more refined, more nuanced. Reading an author who's well-grounded in science and philosophy is a good route towards uncovering meaning.

The science often loses me; the world of biology, axons and dendro-dendritic complex dynamics, the methylation of chromosomes to bring about epigenetic changes... I plough on, feeling (not knowing) that I should trust that Kauffman's science is sound. Because on the basis of that science, he is pushing against the known frontiers of what the scientific community finds acceptable. Beyond that is, what scientists would say, lies 'mystical woo'; the result of the cognitive bias known as wishful thinking.

This time last year:
The atoms within us

This time four years ago:
Our house gets connected to the town drains

This time five years ago:
No more revelations

This time seven years ago:
Free will vs. destiny