All Responses
The question "Are Parts of Human Experience Beyond Scientific Understanding?" provoked interesting and diverse responses from CTT participants. Below is a selection from the opinions that visitors to this web site have sent us. If you want to add your own, click on Send Us Your Thoughts.
All things can be understood by science -- God is the top scientist.
Kenneth, August 12, 2003
Human life is based on two paradoxes: Consciouness and Uniqueness. It's wonderful to "know" so much but terrible to realize your eventual demise. It's wonderful to be totally unique but it's terrible to be so alone: All human endeavor is concerned with a frantic attempt to mitigate this loneliness.
Jim, August 11, 2003
I don't think that parts of human experience are beyond scientific understanding. The only way that science can be hindered from finding the answers to the most elusive questions involving human experience is if it were to fail to evolve or adapt ,which modern science seems to be doing. That is the difference between religion and science.Scientists will admit they are wrong because they are genuinely intrigued by the truth and so they seek it out passionately. Religion on the other hand is rigid and seeks to control through false information.
Sebastian, July 18, 2003
Science is simply a detail of Truth. Truth stands absolute and alone unaltered by man or belief.
Truth will be revealed in totality and won't people be surprised!
L. Kunda, July 9, 2003
I think that the two go hand in hand. Everything came into existence by one of two ways, either by design or by accident. The problem is that many who do the study and research enter the search with their minds already made up or have been lead astray. Remove some of the bogus information (for example Darwin's Theory) and the facts become much clearer. Everything operates according to the laws of the universe and those laws when studied point to the Creator. An example is the following statement, which has a creator - "The fool says in his heart there is no God."
Randy, July 3, 2003
One who, as I do, believes that the human person has a free will believes also and necessarily that human behavior, at least during the commission of a free act, is strictly unpredictable even from a perfect understanding of nature. Otherwise moral evil, which comes into the world only through the actions of men, would be intrinsic to nature herself. The Catholic, however, believes, along with other informed Theists (Jews, Muslims, Protestants), that nature herself is created good, and the very presence of evil in the universe is due to the supernatural freedom of man. (Moreover, we shall never have a perfect understanding of nature because progress is likely to continue until the end of time.) Therefore, the human experience of the free act will always, we believe, defy the attempt to formulate a physical model of it.
Thomas, July 1, 2003
Most human and animal experiences can be explained by scientific understanding. Further advancements in our understanding of human chemistry and genetics will eventually close the gap.
Brad, June 4, 2000
For me, humans and everything else are only by-products of the universe-an evolutionary universe that is realized/animated through the mind. Everything perceived or not is shaped by thought-including the thoughtful construction of god. God, like most belief systems is only a thought-a thought that is created by the thinking animal. Without a perceiver there is no perception or the perceived. Life is clearly located in the mind. We use our body to interact with the external world and the brain is a big part of that process. This is life for me as a thinking animal, everything else is secondary.
Tyrone, June 1, 2003
Science has allowed us to expand our mind and our world. It has helped us better understand and comprehend the world around us. Scientific Discoveries are used to benefit us, and improve our lives here on earth. But inside all of us is the question of what there lies beyond this earth. This equates in a need to believe that there is something better beyond this life and gives us hope to live day by day, that there is something better waiting for us. For it is human nature, and ultimately animal instinct, to fear what we do not understand. That is why death remains such a mystery and brings us so many sleepless nights, and horrid dreams. Because as much as we try to comprehend the world around us there may be things that we cannot and should not be able to understand. Because once we know all there is to know we will no longer be able to continue to question the world around us, making life meaningless.
Jessiquita, May 25, 2003
Much of human experience is deeply personal and calls on individual perceptions. Isolating variables for all of human experience in a scientific manner is not possible. For instance, spiritual and imaginative experiences, by nature, cannot be relegated to scientific analyses. They are food for poets and philosophers- not scientists.
G. Griffith, May 22, 2003
I think the answer is not a question of parts but the whole. Scientific understanding fails to see aspects of all human experience, like a linguistics expert studying words and all the while missing the meaning of each one individually and the story as a whole.
Steve Hammond, May 16, 2003
I have been writing about science for popular media for 30 years and I'm convinced people need and are more satisfied by a convincing story about what things mean, than by scientific findings. Even though I'm committed to the scientific viewpoint wherever it is applicable, science does not have all the answers as yet. So the problem is, it seems to me, how do we find meaning without stories? We can't. I think we need some new unifying stories.
G. W. Gerlich, May 16, 2003
Religion explains the phenomena of life and creation in a way that we now know are simply not true. That is all there is to it.
Amos Baker, May 16, 2003
The operative word here is "Belief" and the controlling irony is that regardless of beliefs, the underlying reality is never effected. Every person on the planet may believe something but reality is never altered. The tragedy of nearly all belief systems and human thoughts is that they are anthropocentric and self serving. Since all tenants in science are continually up for review, there is no place for belief, which makes many of our species very nervous.
M. Bruce Grosjean. May 15, 2003
I do not think the two realms are necessarily separate. Our physical and mental processes are interconnected, but energy is neither created or destroyed, but it can change form. When a person dies, the physical body decomposes and returns nutrients to the system. The mental (or what I think of as electrical energy) or "soul" portion obviously is changed or transformed to something else. I have been there when a couple of people close to me passed away, and there was a definite release of energy. The question is what form that energy takes once the physical being ceases functioning, that is, what is "life" after "death."
Allan Mauer, May 09, 2003
I believe that all or most all of human experiences will become scientifically understandable once we have unlocked the secrets of the brain. That will hopefully erase our fear driven beliefs in deities which have obstructed our progress since we attained consciousness...
Almpez, May 07,2003
I don't believe that we should argue about if science will help us find the meaning of life or religion will. I think that the closer we get to God, we can achieve the impossible, like find out the meaning if life or the future. I think that science and religion can be the same rank.
Faiza, May 02, 2003
What I think you have completely missed in your discussion was realizing the fact that man is and always will be fallible. Man in itself is not perfect and no matter what new "technology" or "discoveries" are made the room for human error is infinite. We can do nothing but speculate and form theories.
Emily Thompson, April 25, 2003
What I think you have completely missed in your discussion was realizing the fact that man is and always will be fallible. Man in itself is not perfect and no matter what new "technology" or "discoveries" are made the room for human error is infinite. We can do nothing but speculate and form theories.
Emily Thompson, April 25, 2003
It is truly unfortunate that Science and Spirituality should be such unhappy members of the same family. God wanted His existence to be unprovable, to be a matter of Faith. And yet He gave us a curiosity and ability to look at His Universe and wonder and discover it's complexities, each discovery, by the way, pointing directly to an intelligent design.
Ken Roswarski, April 24, 2003
I see the factual and the logical as being the gateway to the transcendental. I can see a rainbow and appreciate that the Physics of this wonderful phenomenon explains why it occurs and why each individual sees their own rainbow. This Easter when I saw a rainbow as I walked along a beach on Good Friday around three o'clock, I saw it as a statement that god was reminding me that He has promised not to destroy the world a second time. This was particularly comforting to me with our problems in the Middle East at present.
Malcolm Oliver, April 22, 2003
Any conscious and intelligent being can and will find a satisfactory answer to any questions even where he/she does not yet have enough information to find a meaningful answer. Simply ask a five year-old child any deep philosophical question, most of them will respond with some kind of answer if they can understand the question. Whether the answer is true or useful really doesn't matter. Any answer is satisfactory as long as our brains feel it's right which is rather easy. Although truth can withstand infinite tests while superficial answers will wither away, normally we don't have the infinite time that is needed to test the truth. The only way out of such a loop are answers that you simply have to accept as faith. But why should you accept the faith?
Bingxie Zhang, April 22, 2003
I feel quite certain that "God" in whatever human culture, is a box reserved for the unknown as a force; an attempt to explain the source of that which happens without evidence as to how it happens. And it appears to be genetic, hard-wired into each of us to a degree commensurate with any other genetic mental phenomenon. I opine that it is a relic from a need by early hominids to explain the vast spectrum of the unknown.
Carl Bauer, April 21, 2003
Like Dr. Michael Shermer, I seemed to have been born without the "faith" gene. The concept of a god ( or force) which is concerned with the details of my life and with which there is two way communication ( prayer) has never made any sense. My question - since people like Dr. Shermer and me seem to be in the very small minority of people living today, could there actually be a genetic, biochemical explanation for faith or lack of it?
Joyce Zohar, April 20, 2003
Saw your show tonight for the first time & just love it--especially tonight's topic (April 13-14) on Science vs. Religion. But why no Jew on the panel of experts??? It is the source from which Christianity & Islam took some (if not all) of their best stuff--unattributed on the show (except for the Moslem's mention of the word "Ru" from "Ruach"). Furthermore, I believe a Jew could have more articulately talked with the Scientist (a real materialist who has made a religion out of Science and has the arrogance of a new believer, by the way). Could've listened for hours. Loved the Christian--ah, so articulate, so precise & correct in her English. Could relate to much of what the Moslem said that seemed to go by the others.
Patricia Kimball, April 14, 2003
An excellent discussion tonight. It made me glad to see these essential matters aired out. However, it was a pity nobody was there to demonstrate the Buddhist perspective. I believe it would have opened up another dimension, another perspective on the ultimate.
The Dalai Llama said: "If science proves aspects of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism must change."
Tristan, April 14, 2003
I can remember sitting in an advanced math class in high school, being introduced to equations that involved infinity. I actually felt a little frightened of the notion that some number, some quantity, could be so large that you could never, no matter how advanced or how intelligent you became, measure it. I think that the human experience derives from a shared problem- my fellow humans seem to also have trouble explaining the infinite. I've come to believe that our personal definitions of Reality (from God to Quantum Theory) tantalize us with the notion that someday, we'll finally understand all of the answers to the question... "Why?"
Evan Wade, April 13, 2003
Did I understand Nancy Murphey, who claims to be a believer, state that eventually in a 100 years Christians will accept the Science view that there is not eternity and not a soul? This squarely contradicts Christianity. I would like to know to what religious group she belongs. In fact, it seemed the skeptic and the Christian came closer and closer together during the conversation and realized that were frightenly close in their beliefs. Maybe I did not hear Ms. Murphey correctly, so would appreciate finding out if I am wrong. But, if I am correct, you conveniently left out a strong believing Christian point of view.
Lawana Hale, April 13, 2003
I am a thirteen-year-old homeschooled girl and I "love the Lord my God with
all my heart". I watched your (April 13) show on pbs, and one thing stood out to
me; you put science first, and scripture second. You take what mankind
says for a fact, and then you take what God says and try to explain it in
such a way that it fits into science. The problem with that is that man is
not always right.
Name Omitted, April 13, 2003
Science has come a long way in tapping into the energy, forces and principles of nature, but human nature is another story. I believe God has not only set the laws of nature in motion and basically leaves them alone, God has also created the laws of human nature which (s)he molds, guides and directs daily.
Kevin, April 10, 2003
There seem to be two extremes; believers who are intent on twisting any scientific finding to suit their own ideology, and scientists who treat the quest for meaning as irrelevant. Since humans have been seeking "meaning" answers from the beginning, perhaps science should study WHY we as a species seem to be hardwired to ask those kinds of questions.
Leo Nagorski, April 7, 2003
I'm an agnostic on whether parts of human experience are forever beyond scientific understanding; I don't know. There may be ultimate limits to science, but that shouldn't stop us from pressing the search and expanding the boundaries of our understanding of human experience. Just think of the understanding we have gained in the search so far.
Norton Belknap, March 18, 2003
Speaking strictly of life in this world, I believe we have a scientific handle on most of the mechanical aspects of our living form. But obviously there's more to it. What are the natures of self, soul, intellect, love? They are very real and therefore must exist. Because they exist, I believe they can be understood scientifically at some point in the future. Maybe then, we can ask the next question: "Is existence beyond this world beyond scientific understanding?"
Laurence Soderblom, March 18, 2003
The history of science has been to observe and find plausible explanations for more and more of what humans experience. I see no reason to think that religious experience will prove any different than other realms of human experience. It may be, at least for a long time, beyond the ability of science to explain the subjective feelings an individual may have. However, the ability of pharmacological agents to induce reproducible states of consciousness leads me to think that even subjective feeling may well yield to scientific observation and explanation.
Lloyd Morrisett, March 18, 2003
One of the things that makes the scientific method powerful is the limits we put on it: it pertains to testable hypotheses with predictive power, tested using observation and experiment. Those parts of the human experience that are untestable and unprovable are by definition outside the realm of scientific understanding. To me, it seems that far more than just the existence of god, or religious truths, exists in this realm. Human experience may be derived from electrical and chemical impulses, but it doesn't feel that way, does it? That's a gap science may never be able to bridge.
Greg Okin, March 17, 2003
I think its clear we're still at an early stage in understanding the universe -- both scientifically and in religious or spiritual terms. These different modes of thought and knowing are in conflict only when people interpret them so narrowly as to deny other modes of thought. To me, that means it is simply too early to say whether the insights from each will ultimately coincide or differ.
Allen Hammond, March 16, 2003
Science is able to explain the basis for existence: Religion gives us the ability to hope for things that science cannot explain. My beliefs give me a reason to face each day in a positive way while science gives me the hope of a better world through its medical breakthroughs and the ability to help understand the world around us.
Mary Gant, March 16, 2003
