Emergent Systems – Religion Versus Science

Emergent Systems – Religion Versus Science

Religion is an institution that invokes unobservable and improbable entities to explain the natural world. It provides a default explanation for anything not currently understood. Over the last few thousand years, the number of unknowns has exponentially decreased along with religion's monopoly on why and how. Now, religion is almost never invoked to interpret reality. When someone has a seizure, a hole isn't drilled in his head. When our children ask where AIDS or lightning comes from, we no longer answer "God."

We now have a wonderful array of social and natural sciences at our disposal. Sociology tells us why people behave seemingly oddly in groups. Psychology explains that people aren't strictly good or evil. Biochemistry shows us how the neurons in our brain work and even gives recipes for chemicals that make us happier and less anxious. Physics tells us how these molecules are bound together and how they can be split apart.

Each of the sciences is pretty confined to its scope. The pure sciences explain the simple in slightly simpler terms. The social sciences explain the complex in slightly less complex terms. However, they do string end-to-end very nicely, one picking up where the previous left off.

There does seem to be a large gap that is covered by no field at this time. That gap is between neurobiology and psychology. The first explains how each individual neuron operates. The second, what they do when about 15 billion of them get together. What happens in between that creates consciousness and apparent self-awareness? To many, it's obvious that this gap will be filled by another scientific field. However, to most of the world, this is the final unknown. Like the unknowns before it, it's filled by religion.

Nearly all current religious beliefs are concentrated around this remaining scientific gap. What are the most prevalent remaining religious beliefs? People no longer believe the earth is the center of the universe or disease is punishment from God. These contradict existing hard sciences. The remaining beliefs are those that fill in for this missing scientific field. The soul and the afterlife.

How are the soul and afterlife related to this missing field? The soul is a catch-all concept that substitutes for our lack of understanding of consciousness. Afterlife is recognition that because the mind (soul) is not understood, it is to be treated as a black box. The afterlife concept is a hopeful presupposition that because we do not know what goes on inside the black box, it may possess an ability to transcend its apparent cease of functioning.