Moving Faith Beyond Belief
Religion and faith can be much more than belief: God and His laws are something real that we can discover and experience for ourselves. Come and hear how divine revelation, reason and demonstration can be understood as a spiritually scientific method that brings healing.
Some people feel that religion is simply a set of beliefs humans have invented in order to make sense of the world, and hence that there is nothing more to religion than belief. This lectures sets out to show (in an intellectually rigorous way) how and why this claim is false.
God and His laws aren’t something that we have invented, but rather something real that each of us can discover and experience for ourselves.
The lecture explores how religious conviction can be much more than belief. Arguing that spirituality is real, and that God and His laws aren’t something that we have invented, but rather something real that each of us can discover and experience for ourselves. And in doing so it is my intention to refute the materialist claims of scientism and positivism – which reject the existence of metaphysical truth.
In order to do this the lecture explores the nature of truth and the nature of reality. It shows how postmodernism has attempted to undermine the certainty of scientific truth, but how mathematics evades this challenge. My main thesis is that spiritual truth is akin to mathematical truth, and is just as eternal and incontestable.
Mary Baker Eddy, who founded a metaphysical system…saw her discovery as the unification of Science and Christianity
The lecture draws on the ideas and observations of scientists, philosophers and thinkers including Albert Einstein, James Jeans, Thomas Kuhn, and Huston Smith. However, the main inspiration for the lecture comes from the work of a pioneer in this field, Mary Baker Eddy, who founded a metaphysical system which she named “Christian Science”. Eddy saw her discovery as the unification of Science and Christianity, and many of the themes discussed in the lecture have a bearing on the relationship between Science and Religion – a favourite interest of mine. From this perspective I talk about how to get beyond belief. I share ideas on how religious sensibilities can be upgraded from belief, though faith to spiritual understanding.
In short the lecture:
- Compares dogma, belief, faith and understanding.
- Rejoices in the explanatory power of Science as a means to get beyond belief
- Warns of the dangers of scientism.
- Discusses worldviews in relation to the science and religion dialogue.
- Shows how the revolutionary nature of science makes knowledge gained through the physical sciences more tentative and less certain.
- Shows how and why mathematical truth remains secure and certain, and posits that spiritual truth must be similarly incontestable.
- Considers divine revelation, reason and demonstration as a sound spiritually scientific method.
(This lecture was first given at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution as part of a series on “Belief”.)
