[saymaListserv] Re: [earthcare] Re: Re: Re: (Lomborg/Death of Environmentalism)

[HefnGafr at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/8/05 12:22:45 AM, opihi at mindspring.com writes:


> >I, on the other hand, am saying, as Steve Livingston
> >suggested in his message, that we Friends are bound
> >together in a common search for truth.
> 
> This search is not necessarily on the other hand. The scientific community,
> for the most part, is also bound together by a search for truth. While I
> use different methods to seek truth as a Friend than I do as a scientist, I
> feel that both paths wind toward the same ultimate goal. And I rather doubt
> that either path can reach that goal alone; if the goal can ever truly be
> attained, I think it will require some common ground between science and
> faith. Consensus, if you will.
> 
> 
AMEN.   Scientific and spiritual searchings have GOT to lead to the same 
ultimate truths; any conflict between them has to be apparent only.   They proceed 
by different means, but truth is the goal of both.   Modern physics is the 
best place to see this.   When I was 18, the fundamentalism I'd been brought up 
with smashed into the evolutionary principle I suddenly perceived to be true.  
 Because Genesis and Darwin couldn't both be literally true, I saw no way to 
avoid making a choice between them, and 45 years later I still don't.   When I 
see science and spirituality being approached as adversarial, by anyone, in 
any circumstances, that's the litmus test for me; it tells me I'm part of the 
wrong conversation.   There is no "on the other hand" about it.

This isn't to say that spiritual feelings of the sort I experienced as a South
ern Baptist aren't real in their own way.   But they all too easily bypass 
they world, they don't engage with issues like school integration and gay 
marriage in a way that's consistent with the principles that supposedly underpin 
them (love, kindness, compassion).   They don't translate into thought and 
behavior in the world.   

Where reason and faith travel together on intimate, mutually respectful 
terms, in their different ways, is the only place I want to be.   To arrive at an 
understanding of how they ultimately become the same thing is, in my view, the 
real quest.

Judy Moffett
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