A uniformed unsmiling, fully armed police officer pulled me over. What had I done? What was I, my young, idealistic, apolitical and therefore politically naïve self ─ doing there in a Third World country under an unstable, potentially dangerous, communist, military dictatorship? The officer leaned into the open window on the passenger side of our old Renault 4. There was a long silent pause as he decided what to do with this flushed creature whose hands were clenched on the steering wheel like a ship’s railing in a storm. He reached in and picked up the book on the front car seat and calmly asked me a question in a voice that could have been saying, “Did you know you failed to stop back there?” But that’s not what he asked. Instead, I can still hear his words even decades later. He asked me, “Do you pray?” Is this a threat? No, he was fingering the book entitled Livres de prière indicating that he too prayed and would appreciate having the book. As I drove away trembling I looked in the rear view mirror as he opened the book, then pocketed it.
After I returned to my Western home and graduate studies, I could not forget this incident which repeated itself in many forms. In spite of the pervasive even dogmatic message that the logical next step in human consciousness resided in the 20th century’s western form of atheism, humanism and materialism most people many still living in fragmented nation states that were former colonies ─ still believe that humans are spiritual beings and that some form of prayer unites us all even if it is a silent “Help!” In First Nations and Inuit communities in the Fourth World and in countless nations of the Third World a process of decolonization of the mind, soul and memory is taking place.
Science is one ontological perspective, a way of studying what exists and ways of being of different kinds of things. Is religion another ontological perspective or another way of adding something to the study of what exists? Is the ontological ultimate stuff a process as Heraclites described, a ceaseless flux like fire, not a substance retaining its identity through time. The ontology of things ─ objects, substance, stuff are all one thing ─ raises questions about the world's origin or original principle
arche and its nature
physis. According to Richard Dawkins as he wrote in his bestseller
The Selfish Gene (1976) and recently in
The God Delusion, (2006) these two ways of knowing are conflicting and mutually exclusive.
Ironically, it is the heated debate to which Dawkins, Pinker, Fodor, Searle, etc contribute that contributes to a more robust conversation loudly absent in most institutions of western academia. The Conflicting-Worlds model that holds that science and religion are mutually exclusive ways of knowing could be used as a methodology for arguing on both sides of the Möbius Strip or Möbius Band. Learn by disagreeing out loud. There is only a threat in textual robust conversations if one side misuses power to exclude the other. One who has a strong inherent or nurtured belief in science and/or religion need not feel threatened by examining both sides thoroughly. Given the proper forum these divergent viewpoints may actually share some common ground in terms of social justice.
Those who adopt the Same-Worlds-Model, that is that science and religion are different epistemologies not different ontologies, are by reduction believers in a God who created man with the capacity and responsibility to explore logic, pure mathematics and physics. Their axiological positions may even resonate with one another.
A third possibility is the Separate-Worlds-Model which separates truth into distinct but equal ontological perspectives. This is not quite like the German Romantics, such as Friedrich who believed that a heightened sensorial or sublime experience in nature was a more valid than a spiritual experience based on the Book. The Romantic form of the ontology of nature as a Book of hidden Truth excluded the possibility of Divine revelation. In the Separate-Worlds-Model both the book of Nature and the Book of Religion can enlighten us but in different ways.
to be continued
This is part of an experiment on using free technologies of the cyberworld.
All references can be found in
del.icio.us and/or
Wordpress ,
blogspot Gather,
Swicki ,
Flickr. Eventually there will be more on
thinkfree
dugg,
frimr
Older web sites include Carleton University my
home page (1999-2005)
