God & Science

I came across two pretty different articles on God & science/society this morning. One, from NY Times, focused on the (apparent) division between religion and science in the US. The other, from Klassekampen (a Norwegian socialist newspaper), focused on religion and society - specifically the natural alignment of progressive political issues and Christianity in Norway.

The little I know about Spiral Dynamics seems to be able to explain this to some extent.

In the US, religion is still mostly at a blue level. This creates an apparent division between blue level religion and orange level science, especially when they each manifest in a relatively unhealthy way. Religion holds onto myth as fact, which is not easily compatible with orange level science. And orange level science sometimes throws the baby out with the bath water by rejecting religion altogether, instead of just this one aspect of one form of religion.

In Norway, as in most of the industrialized world, religion is mostly at orange level (with some spillover into green and blue). This makes it a more easy fit with science (and progressive political issues). Orange religion and orange science find ways to accommodate each other, for instance by delegating God into the role of the watchmaker - setting the universe into motion, and science as that through which we figure out how the machinery works.

Of course, later levels of the spiral find other - and to me more interesting - ways of looking at science and religion. There is more of a natural and intimate merging and affinity between the two, and this becomes especially apparent at second tier levels.

One example is the explorations of connections between mysticism and eastern spirituality, and modern science such as systems theories and quantum mechanics. Another, more comprehensive, approach is the AQAL framework, allowing room for the experiential and observable dimensions, and the singular and plural.

At second level tier, the separations of science and spirituality naturally falls away - and the integration of the two emerges more naturally.

Of course, there was never any separation, except in our view. Both science and spirituality (especially that of eastern traditions and mystics) use a similar methodology, emphasizing sincerity and experiences. And both explore aspects of the one seamless whole of Existence.