Religion is only objectively meaningful as an expression of the Spirit but it is only through the help of the Spirit as opposed to earth spirits that animal Man can evolve into conscious Man.What is the essence of religion but spirit? What is everything in religion supposedly pointing to... rules or spirit? The rules are a way of guiding people to spirit, right? And what is spirit other than a common essence... which you don't believe in? I know a lot of people who combine/respect science and SPIRIT -- both of which are nature-oriented -- so, that makes sense to me. Can you see? But science and "religion" is more like combining fact and fiction. Religion is about ideology -- and ideology is not spirit. What are your thoughts on that distinction? Is your focus on ideology or spirit?
But without an appreciation for levels of reality connecting qualities of being the idea of the conscious evolution of human being seems absurd.
Without the foundation of a conscious universe this transformation of Man’s being from animal Man into conscious Man seems impossible. So if you want to at least understand what is meant by the conscious universe, read this page
Science is concerned with increasing horizontal knowledge or linear knowledge while the essence of religion is concerned with universal vertical understanding or the quality of Now and acquiring a human perspective. That is why they are complimentary. I doubt if the modern attachment to fragmentation will allow it but at least for the minority whose minds will survive the effects of technology, contemplating the conscious universe will lead to answers concerning the basic human questions. I guess what else can be asked of a world which thrives on the denial of reality. The page including this excerpt from Jacob Needleman’s “A Sense of the Cosmos” concludes with what is posted. Can you be open to it without either believing or denying the hypothesis?
http://www.tree-of-souls.com/spirituali ... leman.html
We must explore this thought further, for it can help us to see why the idea of a conscious universe appears to modern man as naive, as either a daydream or a nightmare. Science, as we know it, searches the universe for order and pattern. To pursue this search carefully, objectively, the scientist struggles to be free of his feelings, his inclinations to believe. He may follow hunches--what he calls "intuitions"--but in the final analysis he wishes for proofs that will compel the intellect, and only the intellect. The entire organization of modern science, the community of experimenters and researchers, the teaching of science in the schools, the training of specialists, is based on this ideal of proof that compels the mind.
Looked at in this way, we may conclude that the practice of modern science is based on a demand for human fragmentation, the division between thought and feeling. Searching for an outer unity, the scientist demands of himself an inner disunity. Perhaps "demands" is not the right word. We should simply say that in his practice the scientist endorses the division and inner fragmentation from which all of us suffer in our daily lives.
We now see why a conscious universe makes no sense to modern science. In the ancient teachings, higher mind or consciousness is never identified with thought associations, no matter how ingenious they may be. If these teachings speak of levels of reality higher than human thought, they are referring, among other things, to an order of intelligence that is inclusive of thought. Consciousness is another word for this power of active relationship or inclusion. Can the power to include ever be understood through a process of internal division and exclusion? Fascinated by the activity of thinking, and drawn to it to the extent of psychological lopsidedness, is it any wonder that we modern scientific men almost never directly experience in ourselves that quality of force which used to be called the Active Intellect, and which in the medieval cosmic scheme was symbolized by a great circle that included the entire created universe?