personal perspective on harmony of science and religion

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A Perspective on Science and Religion

Blair M. SmithGeonworld

Wellington, New Zealand

December 4, 2011

1 On the Harmony of Science and Religion

Lets begin with this meditation,

A major source of conflict and disunity in the world today is thewidespread opinion that there is some basic opposition between scienceand religion, that scientific truth contradicts religion on some points,and that one must choose between being a religious person, a believer inGod, or a scientist, a follower of reason.Adapted from William S. Hatcher and Douglas Martin, The Baha

Faith: The Emerging Global Religion (San Francisco: Harper and Row,1985), pp. 87-89.

To begin our discussion, I am not so sure how widespread this belief of conflictis, it certainly seems this way going by media reports and political conflicts in theUSA. But world-wide? I think more people have a healthy respect for both scienceand religion, but only, it must be said, those elements of religion concerning moraland ethical teachings. I suspect the good aspects of religion are still held in highregard by most people today, even atheists. In any case, the choice between beinga religious person,. . . or a scientist is a false dichotomy.

Historically science and religion have evolved in parallel with multiple connec-

tions and influences, one upon the other. Let us define science as the exploration ofthe physical universe using observation and experiment and the cyclical inquiry pro-cess of observationhypothesisexperimentationtesttheorizationpredictionobservation. The practice of science often departs extremely from this idealization,for example, some theories are proffered in advance of experimentation straight fromobservation. In a sense observation sometimes serves as the experiment. Also, sci-ence often propounds false theories, and the progress of science is often halting andsporadic, and often very confused and messy. Fully worked out theories are quiterare.

Religion is harder to define and is for many people a personal state of mind.Let us, for the sake of discussion, define two types of religion that are very differentconcepts.

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1. Let S-religion (S for socially constructed) be the socially constructed prac-tices and beliefs revolving around worship of a deity, including the social lawsand norms arising therefrom. This definition is widely used by critics of reli-

gion, but is also a commonly understood usage of the term religion.

2. Let T-religion (T for transcendent religion) be the idea of a revelation ofmoral code and philosophy or theology dictated to a sentient peoples froma proclaimed manifestation of God. This definition is very problematic andcomplex. A number of additional terms need to be defined precisely, and it isoften at odds with the common usage of the term.

The reason for defining T-religion is because it more accurately captures the essenceof what the worlds great S-religious traditions profess in their canonical scriptures.

The issue is whether T-religion exists at all. Many philosophers would say no.S-religion exists manifestly, but there is no way to prove the validity of a claimedT-religion. This is the age-old problem of religious belief. Often belief in a T-religionis subjective, a state of mind of adherents, and cannot be objectively justified. Partof our discussion will be to what extent this places science at odds with T-religionor whether science and T-religion can be unified.

The main consequence I want to point out is that if there is a valid T-religion thenit must be in complete unity and harmony with validated science. Why? Because bydefinition the putative God would be the creator of all things (a universal uncausedcause in the terminology of Hatcher). All the findings of science would then be partof this Gods creation and could not logically conflict with a T-religion revealed by

any valid Manifestation of this putative God.I will also note that the relatively recently proclaimed religious movement known

as the Baha Faith expressly establishes the T-religious usage in Its scriptures. Itclaims that true religion is in harmony with science, and in words echoed decadeslater by Einstein, the Baha canonical writings liken science and religion to twowings of a bird, or like complementary parts of a whole, Einstein wrote,religionwithout science is blind, science without religion is lame, but decades before,Abdul-Baha the son of the founder of the Baha Faith wrote,

Religion and science are the two wings upon which mans intelligencecan soar into the heights, with which the human soul can progress. Itis not possible to fly with one wing alone! Should a man try to fly withthe wing of religion alone he would quickly fall into the quagmire ofsuperstition, whilst on the other hand, with the wing of science alonehe would also make no progress, but fall into the despairing slough ofmaterialism.Abdul-Baha, Paris Talks (London: Baha Publishing Trust, 1969),p. 143.

In another passage from the same work, He affirmed that the result of the practiceof the unity of science and religion will be a strengthening of religion rather than its

weakening as is feared by many religious apologists:

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When religion, shorn of its superstitions, traditions, and unintel-ligent dogmas, shows its conformity with science, then will there be agreat unifying, cleansing force in the world which will sweep before it all

wars, disagreements, discords and strugglesand then will mankind beunited in the power of the Love of God.Abdul-Baha, Paris Talks (London: Baha Publishing Trust, 1969),p. 146.

1.1 Physical Materialism and Atheism

The philosophers who claim there is no such thing as T-religion and never can besuch a thing, base their arguments on a belief in physical materialismthe idea,among others, that there is nothing beyond the physical universe, and therefore no

such thing as a transcendent Godcreator of the universe. The universe just isand that is all there is to things. This is a belief system called atheism. There aremany ways atheism is justified (the paradox of good and evil, the Occams Razorargument), but the main one is this a priori belief that there is nothing outside ofthe physical universe.

It is a problematic position that is in amazing conflict with science. For one thing,science does not assume anything beyond what can be observed or measured directlyor indirectly using physical apparatus. Many unobservable things are accepted byscience, such as the influences that cause the force of gravity. The force of gravityis observable but the stuff that causes gravity is not, nevertheless, gravitons and

curved spacetime are part of the accepted ontology of science. Yet atheism containsthe a priori belief, an assumption, that there is no non-physical reality. This isa tremendously strong philosophical assumption quite at odds with the spirit ofscience. Why? Simply because science never assumes the non-existence of anything.Science is a positive philosophy in the sense of remaining open to the possibility ofnew ideas and unseen things1.

1.2 The Possible Existence of T-Religion

A philosophy which is more sympathetic with science is agnosticismwhere oneneither assumes God (and non-physical reality) exists nor the converse. We should

note that it is a well known fact that no one has ever been able to prove the non-existence of non-physical reality. So agnosticism without the atheistic assumptionsis a tenable philosophical starting point for any beginning philosopher, amateur orprofessional.

Our concern for the moment is whether the notion of a T-religion actually makesany sense. It is at first such an outlandish idea that it seems to lack all credibility.I suspect most people would leave the notion open to subjective opinion and belief.Largely thanks to the Baha Faith I think we can do better. The Baha Faithis very strong on claiming that a valid T-religion can be embraced by anyone of

1Not in the sense of early 20th century logical positivism which was bizarrely named because

it is the antithesis of a positive view of metaphysics.

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rational mind. A more or less systematic procedure is suggested called independentinvestigation of truth. The only presupposition is that there is an objective reality tothe world. If one accepts this, then putting the possibility of cosmological multiple

universes aside2 the implication is that there is an objective component to realitythat all people can agree upon.

Given this, it becomes possible to assess the claim of any putative T-religionagainst evidence. First there is the fact that a valid T-religion would naturallyproclaim itself to be such. The radical notion of a T-religion moreover demandsthat the founder or founders of the T-religion are not normal human beings, but aresomehow enlightened by mystic or spiritual insight. In principle such enlightenmentis no different in nature to scientific insight and artistic creativity, although one hasto admit it would be of an entirely greater order for the founder of a T-religion.But this is too outlandish a claim to be taken for granted. One cannot accept a

T-religion as valid just because the professed founder says so.The next standard of evidence must be the life and teachings of the founder or

founders of the claimed T-religion. This is where an element of subjectivity comesinto play, since we have no clear definition of what a T-religion should look like.However, certain norms of agnostic theology (philosophy of divinity that does notassume the existence of divinity) suggest that there is no real problem in assessingthe relative truth of a T-religion. Firstly, the teachings of the T-religion should beopen for inspection, otherwise it could not be beneficial to all humanity. Secondly,the teachings would be spiritual in nature, and would include social laws governingphysical life only as adjuncts. The idea is that a sound code of morals and ethics

based upon spiritual ideals such as love, justice, honesty, compassion, wisdom, mercyand so forth, should be part of the teachings. This may seem pretty vague as acriteria of evidence for a valid T-religion, but upon deep enough thought I thinkmost rational people will agree that this is clear evidence that can be meaningfullyand fairly assessed.

The next standard of evidence would concern the life of the founder. Any beinginspired by such a revelation of spiritual knowledge would surely not live a life thatcontradicts their own teachings. So we can use this evidence as a filter if you like. Itallows us to fairly clearly distinguish between false prophets who may have borrowedmoral ideas from previous philosophers and applied them to create a new sect intheir name. If this claimant does not live a life in accord with their own teachingsthen we cannot be expected to take them seriously. The Baha teachings go furtherand suggest we should not take such persons seriously period. Or at least, we woulddo so at our peril.

The last main standard of evidence for a valid T-religion is that it should haveenough potency to become surrounded by a core following of faithful adherentswho embody Its ideals and are a source of good. Whether this is due to mysticalpotency or merely the forcefulness and logic of the ideals is largely irrelevant. Mypersonal opinion is that it is sufficient to judge a claimed T-religion by the moralconsistency and logic of its ideals. This is really no different to having faith in a

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Multiple universes does not actually pose any problem, we just want to simplify the discussionhere.

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good scientific theory. When two or more competing scientific theories are advancedcontemporaneously it is usual for practitioners to favour the theory that is moreparsimonious and otherwise favour the more beautiful and elegant theory. Such

considerations are also criteria for assessing the validity of a claimed T-religion.To some people it is a novel idea to judge a religion by how powerful it is as

a source of good. The Baha view is that this is essential for identifying a validT-religion. In other words, this is perhaps the harshest criteria. If something isnot a fource for good then it is not a valid T-religion. We might mention in thisconnection people who commit terrrorist acts in the name of religion. The religionthey claim to represent may unfr=ortunatle have originally been derived from avlid T-religion. However, it is obvious in these instances that the adherents havecorrupted the pure T-religion, it has become an S-religion. An S-religion may be aninspiration ofr terrorists, but by definition a T-religion cannot be an inspiration for

evil.There is more about the independent investigation of truth in the Baha writings.

It is a principle that brings the search for religious truth into great harmony withthe search for scientific truth. We do not have to rely upon blind faith or deeplysubjective experiences.

* * *

Now I want to examine some modern cross-overs between science and religion

2 Can Science Ever Be Complete?

The short answer to this question is that we can never know the full potential scopeof science, but by definition science is limited to making statements about physicalreality. So the best we can say for sure is that if there is non-physical reality withinhuman conception and validation then science is incomplete as a description ofreality, but might still be able to offer us a nearly complete description of physicalreality. This is an important point because if science turns out to show that thephysical universe is causally closed (deterministic in some sense) then the existenceof non-physical reality becomes problematic, although not paradoxical. One might

still validly believe in the existence of non-physical reality, such as ones putativesoul, it is just that science would be telling us that the human soul would have noobservable physical effect. It might have other effects such as conscious thoughtwhich cannot be objectively observed by science.

There are many areas of life traditionally controlled by religion that are beingswept under the province of science. This leads many materialist philosophers toclaim that eventually they will have enough scientific fuel to destroy the usefulnessof religion entirely. These are interesting claims that deserve some scrutiny. Onearea where religion has always, and continues, to hold sway is human moralityand ethics. S-Religion provides us with codes of moral law handed down from thescriptures of putative T-religions. Some people claim that this is absolutely the lasthold of religion over modern society, and if it can be toppled then we will enter a

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new age of enlightenment, one perhaps surpassing the great European 15th16thcentury enlightenment.

2.1 A Science of Morality

If science is to be complete then it would need to furnish us with a theory of morality.This project has recently been begun by a few sociobiologists and evolutionarypsychologists. The idea is to define a notion of human flourishing. This couldbe a complex fluid evolving notion, it neednt be defined by one single set of rigidfactors. With such an evolving notion in agreement human actions could then beassessed according to some sort of scheme that qualitatively measures the impacton human flourishing. This would give rise to a scientific system of morality. Wewould be objectively able to decide what is right and what is wrong.

This project is fairly nave one has to conclude, yet it is hard to rule out thatsomeday such an objective basis for morality will not be possible. The major flawis that most of the human world operates chaotically, in the technical scientificsense of the word chaos, which means a non-linear system that is sensitive to initialconditions. This makes the outcomes of human decisions remarkably hard to predict,especially in long term consequences. It is harder to predict the effect of humanactions than it is to predict the weather. The trouble is that if perfect weatherpredictions are desired for the long term, say a few months out, then we really willnever have a hope of delivering, not unless we can gain almost perfect prediction ofthe entire future of the movement of air molecules and ocean water. Chaos theory

implies that weather prediction will always be hard, meaning that longer termprediction will always require more data than can currently be gathered if one cancurrently only predict for shorter times with all available data. Such is the situationwith the use of a scientific notion of human flourishing.

No matter what happens, the overwhelming likelihood is that a future scienceof morality will arrive at exactly the same universal principles as T-religion. If itdoesnt would that invalidate T-religion? Not necessarily because there is no way toever prove that moral codes based upon the putative science of human flourishinghave any priority or superiority over T-religious authority. Why not? Becausethe science of morality would have to always be based upon a set of primitivesuppositions about what flourishing means. Since this is a subjective decision,presumably taken by world-wide consensus, it is open to debate and refutation,or at the very least open to editing and change over time. Morality derived fromreligious tradition is more absolute in practice, yet also changes with time accordingto the Baha concept of progressive revelation (no T-religion is final) and onenessof religion (all T-religions have the same divine unknowable source).

What doesnt change in T-religion is the essence of morality, the ideals of truth, justice, love, compassion, mercy and so on. The application of thee ideals dependsupon contingent needs and changing dictates of physical life. When the ideal prin-ciples of T-religion are put into practice they cannot avoid becoming pragmatic inapplication. For example, does a physician knowing the power of hope and happi-

ness on the mind and body, reveal to an ill patient they are dying with no chance

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of recovery? If they value honesty above the Hippocratic oath to never do harm toa patient then they may conceal the truth and provide as much positive comfortas they can honestly prescribe. Taking a nuanced view there is no real conflict of

ideals here, but there is a pragmatic concern about how to implement honesty in away that does not harm the patient. In reality in cases of severe illness a physiciannever really knows that a patient is truly terminal, they only have statistics to basetheir assessment upon, and statistics can always be defied.

So there is always room for change. Neither T-religion nor scientific moralitybased upon flourishing are fixed and unchanging. There is reason to believe therewill be a confluence of these different sources of moral pragmatism.

2.2 A Science of Consciousness

One other main province of religion that science so far has not impeached upon isthe existence and nature of the human soul. However, many philosophers regardthe primary rationale for belief in the human soul to be the first-person subjectiveexperience of consciousness. The feeling is that if science can explain consciousnessthen there will be no need for religious notions of human souls that need to be savedor redeemed by some sort of subjugation to religious belief.

The Baha Faith is clear in stating the the human soul is a reality and that it ismoreover and abstract reality, like the number or the idea of a perfect circle or theidea of perfect love. These are all abstract realities. It is also clear from the writingsof the Baha Faith that the conscious mind is a manifestation of the human soul.

So if a science of consciousness can be developed and founded purely upon physicsand biology then the Baha Faith cannot be a valid T-religion.This may sound like bad news if you favour the Baha Faith. But it is not so bad.

Further advances in artificial intelligence (AI) might produce digital programmesand machines that are outwardly conscious in behaviour, but there is no possiblephysical way to test for the actual existence of first-person subjective consciousness.How can I know this? Well, by definition, subjective sentient states of awarenesscannot be inspected by objective means. So there cannot be a fully developedscience of consciousness. At best science can hope for a more or less completetheory of behavioural psychology based upon brain-mind studies and correlations.But correlates of consciousness is the best data science can hope to gather. Thismeans actual data about subjective consciousness is physically impossible to gatherfirst hand. It must be passed on to an experimenter by a conscious subject. Infact it must be passed on by an assumed conscious subject. The experimentalistnever knows whether their patient is a real human or a zombiea creature that actshuman but has nothing going on inside their mind.

I hope you realize this does not mean conscious robots are impossible. Maybe AIresearch will produce conscious machines. The trouble is we could never perform anyphysical experiment that would prove the existence of sentient subjective awarenessin such machines, because we cannot even do this for ourselves. I am writing thesewords on this page but how do you know I am thinking them as thoughts, maybe

the universe has simply programmed me to do this and in reality I have no free will

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in the matter, and inside my brain is nothing, a zombie emptiness, there is no I inmy head. This can never be confirmed or denied by any scientific methods.

2.3 The Human Soul

Before any disharmony between science and religion can be established concerningthe nature of human thought, we need to clarify what T-religion says about thehuman soul. I will again take the Baha Faith as the nearest model of T-religionavailable. According to Bahaullah,

spirit, mind, soul, hearing and sight are one but differ through dif-fering causes.Bahaullah, cited in Studies in Immortality, Star of the West XIV,p. 8.

The idea is that the mind, the rational soul, the inner power of sight and hearingare all aspects of a single consciousnessor spiritintermediated through differentchannels. Abdul-Baha elaborates,

It is the same reality which is given different names according tothe different conditions wherein it is manifested. . . when it governs thephysical functions of the human body, it is called the human soul; when itmanifests itself as the thinker, the comprehender, it is called mind; Andwhen it soars into the atmosphere of God, and travels to the spiritualworld, it becomes designated as spirit.

Abdul-Baha, Promulgation of Universal Peace, Wilmette: US BahaPublishing Trust. 1982, p. 259.

If the power of thought can ever be proven by science to reside in purely physicalcauses then this would cause potential conflict with this T-religion view of the originof human thought and consciousness. However, for reasons previously given, itis unlikely science can ever make any progress towards understanding the innersubjective character and origin of thought and consciousness.

It is nevertheless important that cognitive science tries to understand conscious-ness and thought. These puzzles are important drivers of scientific progress. Onehas to wary though of pseudo-science that has its goal the pursuit of physically

unprovable hypotheses.We will discuss AI and consciousness again. For now, we will rest the case of

science in harmony with T-religion by simply noting that science can never invalidatethe belief that you or I have a non-physical soul.

2.4 The Purpose of Life

Religion provides a motivating purpose for human civilization. We do not need toreview the details here. Science does not comment on purposes of life. So in thisarea of philosophy there is no conflict between science and T-religion, and perhapsnot even a conflict with S-religion.

In Baha philosophy the motivating purposes in life are described as two-fold,

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1. For individuals the purpose of life is to acquire divine perfections (spiritualattributes) in order to become closer to knowing and loving God.

2. The purpose of society is to advance civilisation materially and spiritually.

Science does not study spiritual attributes, and so there is no conflict between scienceand religion regarding the purpose of life. There is just very little overlap. Scienceis however extremely useful for enabling human civilization to flourish, to reducematerial dependencies and thus to create more time for spiritual growth. At theturn of the 21st century most human free time enabled by advances in food andliving technology has been used to increase the pursuit of leisure. This is not a badthing but is seen as sub-optimal by most religious teachings. So contemplating thepurpose of life we see that religion is complementary to science.

3 Questions of Origin

3.1 Origin of Life

One area where science has seemingly completely toppled religion is in explainingthe evolution of life. This is a somewhat hollow victory for science however. Manyadherents of religion have absolutely no problem in believing the theory of evolution,that humans have descended from apes and they in turn from some small shrew-like mammalian amphibious ancestor and they in turn from some primeval protozoaback about 3 billion years in the Earths history.

The controversy over the origin of life is primarily a literalistic Christian dilemma,for those who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible and the Book of Genesisin particular, they have major conflict with modern science. In this case one canagree that science of this particular form of S-religion are in complete disharmony.According to Baha principles this means literalistic Christianity cannot be part ofa valid T-religion. Thus, the scientific explanations for the origin of life are not inconflict with true religion.

3.2 Origin of the Universe

The most recent theory on the origin of the universe is the ekpyrotic brane theory,borrowing ideas from superstring and M-theory3. It seeks to explain the Big Bangtheory using the idea that our universe is actually only a 4D surface embedded ina higher dimension 5D multiverse. The Big Bang, or event like it, occur when two4D brane worlds collide. This theory is about as religious as science can get. Thisis colourful stuff, and even if false, it is a remarkable accomplishment of the humanmind to even get so close to understanding the origin of the universe.

3These were theories dreamed up in the 1970s to try to explain nuclear forces, which were then

refined in the 1980s to try to explain all the forces of nature, including gravity. Because of the

incredible density of matter and energy gravity is of course the main driving force in any Big Bang

theory.

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However, none of these theories of origin of the universe are actually theoriesabout the origin of physical reality. We have good ideas about how our particularuniverse might have arisen from a prior singularity or ekpyrotic collision event, but

these theories, none of them, can explain why there is any physical reality in thefirst place. The great physicists John A. Wheeler once mused that if the completeequations governing physics could ever be discovered and written down they wouldinstantly and spontaneously spring to life because they would be so compelling. Butthe fact is equations cannot bring themselves to life. Our universe did not start outas an equation on a sheet of paper in some other higher dimensional physicistsworldat least no one believes this sort of story.

You may come across scientists and philosophers who offer a religion-free versionof an origin to all of physical reality. One type of story goes that there is no needto explain physical reality, since it just is. Now it may be so that our universe is

essentially timeless, that there was no zero point in time. This is probably the mostplausible concept of time that can be ascertained from modern physics. However,to claim that this obviates the need for a creator, a prime cause of all things, seemsto be philosophical nonsense. It is like postulating this loaf of bread here came intoexistence without a baker. I personally find such scientific myths as implausible assome S-religious claims. I do not wish to dismiss them from serious critique4, but Iwill do so in these notes.

The other type of story is that quantum uncertainty allows physical matterto appear from nothing. However this is quasi-scientific nonsense. The truth thatphysicists have discovered with quantum theory is simply that an existing spacetime

is not a total vacuum. Where there is spacetime there are virtual particles that popinto and out of existence in flashes of nanoseconds or less. Even in these seeminglyrandom events there is structure and order. Virtual particles are always created inpairs, a particle and its antiparticle. But these processes can only take place in anexisting spacetime. They cannot spring up from utter nothingness. So there is notheory of quantum mechanics that can explain how physical reality came into being.The idea that physical reality is timeless is more philosophically and scientificallyplausible.

4 Truth and Relativity

I mention this topic because it can be co-opted by science to thwart religious ideals.But we will see there is a huge problem with this view.

The gist of the idea is that all truth is culturally constructed. So no one canclaim absolute knowledge. This is not a scientific proposal about epistemology. Itis an idea that originated with post-modern philosophical schools of thought closelyassociated with social anthropology, sociology, and feminist studies. The usefulnessof relativity is however dubious, since on simple empirical evidence it seems thereis plenty of knowledge and facts that every culture agrees upon. Often cultural

4These ideas do deserve serious attention because the idea that the universe needs no causal

originator is not obviously logically false.

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differences are not truly incompatible either, merely different ways of expressingand understanding knowledge.

For example, Greek then Arabic then European mathematics uses a common

thread of knowledge that we all learn about in school. But in some societies thatwere disconnected by millennia from Egyptian, Babylonian and Greek thought havecome up with different systems of mathematics. However, when these alternatesystems are logically analysed they always turn out to be totally compatible withmodern mathematics. Mathematics does appear to be a cultural universal andabsolute.

There is however a great deal of merit to the ideas of cultural relativism. Atthe very least the ideas give us pause to think how other people may see the worlddifferently. This is an important notion. Learning to think or empathise with otherpeople and entire other cultures is an important tool in any modern peace advocates

kit. However it does not mean that there is no objective truth about reality.Some people might ague that sure enough physical reality is reasonably ob-

jectively describable (despite the uncertainties in measurements due to quantummechanics). Yet, they may argue, spiritual reality, our inner private subjective un-derstanding of the world, is irreducibly subjective and non-universal. Such ideas arehighly contentious and are not really open to scientific investigation, because there isno scientific theory of consciousness. We will talk more about this later in the topicon free will. The point is that it is hard to ague with people who want to believethat human consciousness and spirituality is a totally relative phenomenonthatthere is no absolute nature to spiritual realitythat it is all in our private mind, so

to speak.Well, again, we can point out that such notions are not scientific. Thought theymay be valid. They also do not effect the relationship between science and religion,which remains in harmony despite any truth to cultural or spiritual relativism.Besides this, there is one great flaw in any theory of relativism of truth. If onefirmly believes that truth is not absolute, then one mus deny the truth of this veryclaim. So relativism in truth is self-defeating. It is like the Russell paradox ofmathematical set theory.

Let R be the set of all sets x that are not members of themselves. So is R amember of itself or not? There is no way to decide.

The Baha teachings stress the fundamental harmony of science and religion.This view derives from the belief that truth (or reality) is one. For if truth is indeedone, it is not possible for something to be scientifically false and religiously true.Abdul-Baha expressed forcefully this idea in the following passage:

If religious beliefs and opinions are found contrary to the standardsof science, they are mere superstitions and imaginations; for the antithe-sis of knowledge is ignorance, and the child of ignorance is superstition.Unquestionably there must be agreement between true religion and sci-ence. If a question be found contrary to reason, faith and belief in it areimpossible, and there is no outcome but wavering and vacillation.Abdul-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace (Wilmette: BahaPublishing Trust, 1922. 2nd edition 1982, p. 181.

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5 The AI Singularity

Sometime towards the latter quarter of this century it has been predicted computing

power will have advanced to the level of full brain simulation. The rest of thehuman body is pretty much a life support organ for the brain. So couple a fullbrain simulation with a rudimentary virtual world and you have the possibility offull fledged human life in an electronic digital world. This would allow humancivilization to escape the terrible inefficiencies and excesses of living on the physicalplanet. We would just need to replicate our brain patterns in online simulations.This would require even more advanced technologyincreased resolution of MRIand computed tomographic brain scans to fully encode the information of our brainsin digital snapshots. This technology is foreseen as available sometime towards theend of this century or most optimistically as soon as 2050.

When these technologies come into being (and it is probably a matter of whennot if) then this moment in history will be the AI singularity. Why is it so im-portant and epochal in terms of human history? One reason is that no one hasever figured out how to produce conscious states in machines. We dont even knowwhether other animals are conscious. In fact we dont know whether we are allconscious. At best, only I can presume other people are conscious because they areborn in the same way I am, and I know I am conscious, and other people exhibitsimilar behaviour that can only be attributed to some form of conscious awareness.Hopefully you can do the same!

The problem of consciousness thus maybe seems to be merely philosophical

consciousness cannot be proven, but it can be inferred without too much controversyor doubt. But it is not just a philosophical problem. We do not know if persistentlyvegetative patients suffering from coma are conscious or not for example. If they arenot conscious then there is a good case for treating them as basically dead, makingtermination of costly life support a valid moral option. But if they are consciousthen terminating life support would be legal murder. There is another reason whythe problem of consciousness is of practical concern, we will see why shortly.

In the movie The Matrix the machine agents were right to think of humans asa cancer on the planet Earth. Everywhere humans live the rest of the planets lifesuffers, and humans have probably been responsible for hundreds of extinctions ofspecies every week for the past hundred years or more since the industrial revolution

(the exact figure is a matter of dispute, but the gross account is not). So there areincentives for the planet Earth, if not for individuals, to get started living in digitalform.

There is one big danger about the AI singularity. What if we scan and uploadour brains into digital worlds but these entities end up not sharing our conscious-ness, or worse, perhaps they will not be conscious at all? There is no way to knowbecause, as discussed above, there is no physical test for the existence of conscious-ness. Consciousness is a subjective state, not objective, although it does in mostusual circumstances give rise to certain behaviour, especially intelligence, this is noproof of subjective conscious awareness within an entity. Do we really have to worry

though?

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A possible scenario might go as follows. We get a volunteer (there are alreadythousands of people lining up for this) willing to have their brain scanned anduploaded into a digital environment with a full physical simulation. If the digital

person starts doing unpredictably human-like things and communicating like areal person then there will be little cause to worry about the philosophical nuancesof whether the new entity is conscious or not. It would be morally objectionableto terminate their life by shutting down the computer network upon which theydepend.

However, before entrusting all of our species to going digital it might be wiseto keep a few billion organic humans around to keep the computer network run-ning while robotics advances to the state of being able to self-repair and build newcomputer networks and explore the cosmos in interstellar spacecraft. Demandinganything less before permanently and completely going digital as a species would be

profoundly stupid. Furthermore, I am sure many people would refuse to go digitaland could probably rationalise this decision on religious, ethical and humanitariangrounds. As a safeguard it would also be wise to solve the problem of rejuvenationof an extinct species from preserved cellular material or DNA, or even just fromthe digital information of a genomevia synthesis of embryonic cells from scratch.These are enormous technological challenges which will ensure organic humans sur-vive for a long time to come if we can avoid our own extinction due to climate changeor the disaster of an asteroid impact or worse.

Now is any of this incompatible with a religious world-view? Personally I find ithard to see anything about an AI singularity that would invalidate the claims of a

putative T-religion. I suspect many S-religions would fall out of favour though. Ifone is committed to the ideology that human consciousness is non-physical in originthen one might have to give up on this religion if human life is seen to flourish bothscientifically, artistically and creatively in digital worlds. But if T-religion of someform is valid then what could one conclude other than that the Creator designedthe human soul (whatever it is, physical in pattern or not) to exist in any functionalform of the requisite complexity. What is so special about DNA? We share all thesame biological components and functions as any other species, so the human souldoes not appear to depend upon biology.

In fact the success of AI singularity would be in a strange way evidence that thehuman soul is not physical in origin. The idea is the metaphor or analogy of thesoftwarehardware duality. Descartes thought that humans had a dual aspect, thephysical body and brain and the non-physical soul and mind. These days Carte-sian dualism is hugely out of vogue, but not for good reasons, mainly because theideas of Descartes are widely misunderstood. The computer analogy helps recovera valid form of Cartesian duality. Computer programs are really ideas. They canexist in many different software forms, such as different programming languages,and in many different versions of hardware, such as different computer architecturesand operating systems that run the software. Virtual machine technology is a cleardemonstration of the duality of computer programmesthese days you do not evenneed dedicated hardware to run a programme. The analogy with human conscious-

ness is clear. Perhaps human consciousness is an abstract entity that exists and has

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inner life independently of how it is implemented or instantiated. If so, then thereis no reason to dogmatically believe that only humans born from DNA and cells canbe conscious.

The AI singularity would be empirical proof that the human mind really is notdependent upon biology, and hence is not really a physical thing, but more likea pattern that can exist in many different substrates. Furthermore it would lendcredence to the notion that if there is a non-physical reality or higher dimensionsto the cosmos, then human consciousness could perhaps transcend our known 4Duniverse and survive in some form independently. There is no theory about this,but it is a logical possibility that would only be supported by the eventuality of anAI singularity.

These issues are moot at present because we have no proof that minds will beable to survive uploading into digital brains. In any case, the AI singularity would

not invalidate a true religion.Interestingly, the Baha Faith does comment on the irreducible nature of the

human soul,

The soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the mostlearned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, howeveracute, can ever hope to unravel.Bahaullah, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahaullah, Wilmette:Baha Publishing Trust, 1976, pp. 158-59.

This is interesting because it means we can never really understand our own souls.

We can only know the nature of the human soul from what it manifests, by itsproperties, for its essence is inscrutable. In commenting on the immortality of therational soul, Abdul-Baha explained that everything in creation which is composedof elements is subject to decomposition:

The soul is not a combination of elements, it is not composed ofmany atoms, it is of one indivisible substance and therefore eternal. Itis entirely out of the order of the physical creation; it is immortal!Abdul-Baha, Paris Talks, 11th ed., London: Baha Publishing Trust,1969, p. 91.

There is some bearing on the possible AI singularity. For example, how can thehuman soul be inscrutable and beyond our comprehension if we can replicate itsappearance in digital form? I do not think this question makes much sense. Justbecause we might be able to capture human life in digital form would not meanwe have any greater inkling about the nature of human creativity and insight andthe things that are commonly attributed to the property of beings with immaterialsouls. The AI singularity would not be a proof that the human soul is physical andmaterial in origin. It would merely suggest that human consciousness is a patternmanifested in physical reality that can be supported by various different informationcarrying substrates. None of these findings would be in contradiction to any known

T-religious conceptions of the human soul.

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6 The Omega Singularity

This is another type of technological singularity not often discussed in the science

versus religion debates. It is the idea that our universe will inevitably suffer fromeither a gravitational collapse or a thermodynamic cooling death. In the thermo-dynamic cooling death all massive particles could eventually decay into pure light,and then there would be no meaning to scales of length and time, such a cosmoswould for all intents and purposes resemble a singularity itself like the pre-Big Bang.So the universe could conceivably undergo another Big Bang event and life mightcontinue, eternally.

In the gravitational collapse scenario the universe would become incredibly denseand life would have to evolve into a form of near pure energy to be able to sustainitself in the rapidly collapsing phase. The cosmologist Paul Tipler has worked out

that an advanced civilization could manage to use the increasingly dense matterto construct ever more powerful computers that would be capable of exponentiallyfaster computations over time, so that although the universe would eventually col-lapse, the human computations would survive and eventually grow so powerful thatthey would be capable of supporting life indefinitely, living at an exponentially fastrate of change, and essentially becoming god-like at the final Big Crunch. Whena civilization becomes god-like then all bets are off. We can only guess that thecollapse of the universe would be nothing to such a civilization, they could cope andsurvive either by progressing to infinitely rapid life or by transcending the collapseentirely somehow by exploiting quantum mechanical alternative histories.

This fanciful notion is called the Omega point by Tipler. Its a fantastic thing tothink about, but it does not really produce any serious conflict with T-religion.If a civilization ever becomes god-like this would be only with respect to totalomnipotence and omniscience about physical reality. The human spiritual dimensionwould be either unaltered or enhanced. That is about all I have to say about theOmega singularity for now.

7 Free Will

This is the last topic I will discuss. It is the only philosophical topic where in my

mind there is an unresolved debate between the borders of science and religion.Free will is normally something people want to believe in, after all, we feel like

we are free, at least free to think and do whatever the laws of physics will allow.We can think about walking on thin air or levitating against gravity unaided, butphysics prevents us. But when given a choice between a red pill and a blue pill wefeel intuitively that there is no law of physics that is forcing us to opt for one or theother.

But are we fooling ourselves? Our brain is under complete control of the lawsof physics, so maybe our brains have evolved this trick of making us think we arein control, when in fact we are not. This is called the multiple re-write theory of

consciousness and free will. The way it works is that the human brain interprets

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actions that it conveys to the body and writes them upon working memory as if theyoriginated from the distributed pattern in our brains that is equated with consciousself image. This trick allows the brain to both perceive itself and thus form a self-

image, which in turn can be tricked into thinking it has autonomous control. Howdoes the brains self-image think though? Well, as best I can tell from this theory(which is not very scientific), thinking is explained as a model of the self-image fromwithin the self-image. Assuming brains can do such computational tricks, then wemight concede it is plausible that free will is an illusion. The theory is not really wellworked out though and it doesnt really explain the subjective qualitative feelingof thinking (not for me anyway, maybe it does adequately describe what otherphilosophers feel, which might explain why they accept this theory).

The reasons why evolution by natural selection would have engineered this uniquecapacity in human brains is a mystery that no-one has fully explained with any de-

gree of satisfaction. The problem for evolutionary psychologists working on thistopic is that any theory of the biological evolution of consciousness must confrontthe fact that it is a massive waste of resources for a brain to perform so muchcomputation that consciousness eventually emerges, when all the same actions andbehaviour could take place without subjective awareness. In other words, if free willis really an illusion then there can be no selective pressure for organisms to evolveconsciousness. If free will is illusory then consciousness confers no evolutionary sur-vival or adaptive advantage, and therefore must be considered a relic and inefficient,albeit miraculous, side-effect of human evolution. Consciousness is an accident.

This is pretty good motive for taking the reality of free will seriously. Suppose

it is not an illusion. The problem then is how can we square this with the laws ofphysics, which seem pretty deterministic. If our brains are determined by physicallaws then where is there any room for free will? And how can free will influence ouractions if it is not a physical property? This is the age old soulbody problem.

Current thinking is, I think, converging to the view that free will is not a propertyof brains. It is thought of instead, like consciousness, as a pattern that just happensto exist in a certain physical form, i.e., the brain for now. It might exist in otherforms we are not aware of, and we only have a feeling of free will because we areexperiencing the present physical form. Who knows what happens to the patternafter the death of our brains. It cannot physically survive, but that does not ruleout some sort of connection with a continued spiritual reality. So much about thelink between the spiritual and the physical is unknown and a complete mystery toscience. Most people give up thinking about it.

The less said about the mind-brain connection and the physical-spiritual link thesafer one is for avoiding dispute. But this is not to say these questions are pointless.

7.1 Determinism and Free Will

Lets go back to the problem of determinism in a slightly different form. A goodargument against the reality of truly free will is that it is incompatible with theconcept of an omnipotent God. This is not an issue for atheists, and it is an

argument that sways agnostics towards belief in atheism especially if they covert

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their free will and do not want to relinquish it. The argument is that since God(if God exists) knows all and is all-powerful, nothing can be done without Godsforeknowledge, and nothing can be done without the say or will of God to let it be

done. If all our actions are so foretold by God and indeed caused by God, then whatpossible meaning can there be left for so-called free will? Determinists say there isno room left for truly free will, it is an illusion that God allows us to enjoy (or isperverse enough to let us suffer some would say).

Other people have argued for subtler notions of free will that endow humanswith a variety of freedom. But in the final analysis if one adheres to determinismthen free will is largely an illusion.

Does this cause a conflict between science and religion? I personally cannot seeone. T-religion does sometimes remark upon the nature of the human soul and con-fers upon it a variety of autonomy. But everything has a cause. If a thing or action

or decision is truly due to random chance then it can no more be a result of agencythan a thing which is caused by physical law or God. The issue is about cause andchance. An absolute cause implies there is no chance. Maybe human consciousnessand free will are only random for all practical purposes, and the agency of free willappears to be due to random forces, but in reality is some sort of inscrutable causalprocess.

Random for all practical purposes means that the thing cannot be predictedwith less data than complete foreknowledge. Since this is a power only given to aputative God, by definition, it implies that if free will is to be found anywhere it isto be found as originating directly from God.

I have not summarized the state of science and religion on the matter of free willand determinism. I dont think there is a case to answer anyway, since science hasvery little to say about free will. It is a topic that is still dominated by philosophy.There is, however, one curious experiment done that may have influenced the debateabout free will. This is Benjamin Libets experiment on the timing of consciouslyreported volitions. Human subjects report the will to move their hands or fingersonly six full milliseconds after their brain produces the neural impulses that areprecursors to moving their hands. The brain seems to be acting ahead of our freewill. This has caused many scientists to suspect that free will is an illusion. Suchhypotheses are premature. The six millisecond delay could have many other causes,or could be an experimental artefact, and we cannot tell how long it takes for asubject to get the communication out of their body, maybe their free will had thevolition and made the decision well before the six millisecond build up of neuralactivity? Too much is open to interpretation to make definitive conclusions.

7.2 Libertarianism and Free Will

The converse to determinism is libertarianism. This not associated with politicallibertarianism. It is the idea that the laws of physics are not complete, they leavesome things in nature up to chance. Where there is an element of chance libertar-ians argue, there is a possibility that some non-physical agency can step in, so to

speak, to determine the course of physical time evolution. This pushes the issues of

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determinism away from the physical sphere to some putative non-physical realm.The problem with libertarianism is that if brains do not cause our decisions

then what does? Who or what is the I that causes free will decisions? If free

will is located in random quantum mechanical fluctuations then it would seem tobe acausal. But if nothing causes free will what meaning is there to the notion?Surely, if free will is not an illusion, something, the self the I, must cause ourwilled decisions?

The Baha Faith articulates something relevant to these questions. The fact weknow the Sun will rise tomorrow does not cause the Sun to rise. The fact that aGod could know what we are going to decide, has complete foreknowledge of ouractions, does not cause these actions. So foreknowledge does not imply causation.

Abdul-Baha wrote a penetrating, or maybe abstruse (depending on your pointof view), short commentary on free will. At the beginning of his commentary he

seems to affirm the reality of the autonomy of human free will, and that it is aninnate power of the human soul, the soul being manifested in physical form has somemeasure of determination in physical affairs.

This question is one of the most important and abstruse of divineproblems. If God wills, another day, at the beginning of dinner, we willundertake the explanation of this subject in detail; now we will explainit briefly, in a few words, as follows. Some things are subject to thefree will of man, such as justice, equity, tyranny and injustice, in otherwords, good and evil actions; it is evident and clear that these actionsare, for the most part, left to the will of man. But there are certainthings to which man is forced and compelled, such as sleep, death, sick-ness, decline of power, injuries and misfortunes; these are not subject tothe will of man, and he is not responsible for them, for he is compelledto endure them. But in the choice of good and bad actions he is free,and he commits them according to his own will.Abdul-Baha, Some Answered Questions, US Baha Publishing Trust,1990, p. 305.

But then later, in the same commentary also affirms to omnipotence of God, asultimate cause of all things:

In the same way, in all the action or inaction of man, he receivespower from the help of God; but the choice of good or evil belongsto the man himself. So if a king should appoint someone to be thegovernor of a city, and should grant him the power of authority, andshould show him the paths of justice and injustice according to the lawsif then this governor should commit injustice, although he should act bythe authority and power of the king, the latter would be absolved frominjustice. But if he should act with justice, he would do it also throughthe authority of the king, who would be pleased and satisfied.

That is to say, though the choice of good and evil belongs to man,

under all circumstances he is dependent upon the sustaining help of life,

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which comes from the Omnipotent. The Kingdom of God is very great,and all are captives in the grasp of His Power. The servant cannot doanything by his own will; God is powerful, omnipotent, and the Helper

of all beings.Ibid.

It is a puzzle to reconcile these two ideas.First we should realize that a sufficiently powerful being should logically be able

to cause a thing and yet grant an autonomous agency free control. At first thisseems like a paradox, but if the logic can be resolved then there is of course nothingto worry about. One does have to get ones head around this awesome concept ofa Being so powerful that It could simultaneous determine and cause all things andyet grant autonomous agency over a limited domain to entities in Its creation.

The way I like to figure this out is by a computer simulation analogy. Supposeyou are a very, very gifted computer programmer, and you have simulated an entiredigital world and ecosystem, complete with autonomous agents. You write thecode and run the simulation and work out all possible words that could evolve.To do this you may need a quantum processor5. Then for some reason you runthe same simulation on another computer. You will in principle have completeforeknowledge of what your autonomous agents will do, since you have sampled allpossible evolutions. So does this mean your autonomous entities were really notautonomous?

This gedankenexperiment is really hard to envisage, but it should give you someidea of how to interpret Abdul-Bahas explanation of free will. I think an appropri-ate sound-bite would be to say that the Baha conception of free will is a relativeone. Free will exists in degrees. Subatomic particles and atoms have virtually nofree will, animals have some sort of autonomy, and humans have near maximal freewill within physical constraints. Only God has absolute free will.

7.3 The Conway-Kochen Free Will Theorem

Mentioning the minimalistic degree of free will attributable to say photons andelectrons is a nice segue into some cool quantum physics. The point of this sectionis to show you that even subatomic particles have a variety of free will. I will give

a non-technical summary of the theorem, which is a theorem derived from the rulesof relativistic quantum physics.

Consider a fundamental particle such as an electron. Electrons have a propertycalled spin which when measured can have a value of either +1 or 1. A pair ofelectrons can be created by a simple experiment which always produces a pair ofelectrons with opposite spins, one spin +1 and the other spin 1. The measured

5These are computers based upon quantum logic, which are roughly logics that consist of multi-

ply superposed bits of information, known as qubits. Such computers have b een built, although to

date the most powerful quantum computers can only operate on a couple of quibits, so they are not

very useful. Eventually quantum computers should be powerful enough to perform simultaneous

parallel computations. They will be able to perform computations that are impossible on the most

powerful bit-processing computer systems.

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value of an electrons spin always lines up with an applied magnetic field so that theorientation is always +1 or 11 and never any value in between. Suppose we createtwo such electrons sending one to the left at near the speed of light, and the other to

the right at near the speed of light. We would expect that a measurement of +1 forthe left electron will guarantee with probability 1.0 that the right moving electronwill be measured with spin 1.

Now suppose we repeat the experiment with the right moving electron experi-ment magnetic field rotated by 45 with respect to the field used to measure the leftelectron. What should be the value of spin for the right electron if the left electronis found to have spin +1 again? The answer is that there is a 50/50 chance, orprobability of 0.5 that the right electron spin is +1 and a 50/50 chance that it is+1. The spin cannot take any value other than 1 so the 45 rotated apparatus ina sense is confused and so results in this 50/50 probability.

That is a weird result, but it has been demonstrated many times and testedmany times and this is the way electrons behave. But there are many other ex-periment that can be done exploiting this seeming ambiguity about the spin of anelectron formed by this correlated pair method. One beautiful experiment devisedby the mathematician John Horton Conway and the mathematical physicist SimonKochen uses a set of 33 directions in space where the spin of each electron is si-multaneously measured in 3 perpendicular directions. Because of the way the 33directions are chosen every measured must yield a triple of result either (1,+1,+1),or (+1,1,+1) or (1,+1,+1), these are the allowed triples. That is two of themeasurements must yield a spin of +1 and the remaining third measurement must

be 1. This is a certainty according to quantum physics.Conway and Kochen prove that the spin correlations between the twin electronsis such that once the left electrons spin values in three chosen directions are de-termined the possible values of spin for the right moving electron cannot possiblybe determined for all 33 directions. So no matter what choice of three orthogonaldirections is chosen for the right electron, it will assuredly result in an allowed triple,but the particular triple that is obtained is inconsistent with the allowed triples forother choices of spin axis. A violation of this rule would violate quantum mechanics.Call this the Conway-Kochen law.

To interpret this theorem, which uses only laws of physics, you have to appreciatethat no signal can be sent faster than the speed of light, so there is no way for aninfluence from the left electron to be sent to the right electron to tell it which wayto point its spin direction along any particular three of the 33 directions.

Here is the kick of this theorem. If two physicists, Alice and Bob, have enoughfree will to randomly choose three orthogonal directions in this experiment, thensince the electrons cannot signal which three axes will be chosen until they encounterthe magnetic fields, the electrons have to have a minimalist type of free will to beable to orient their spin according to the rules of quantum mechanics so the Conway-Kochen law is not violated.

To be more concrete, suppose the left electron is measured first by Alice, it couldbe considered lazy and let its spin be arbitrarily determined yielding some allowed

triple. But then for the right moving electron there is no information available for it

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to have twinned spin opposite to its left moving twin and that satisfies all possibleorthogonal triples that the second experimenter Bob could choose from among the33 options.

The reason the right moving electron in this experiment must have some minimalamount of free will is because there is no information in the past history of theuniverse that can fix the values of spin that the right electron should produce on all33 directions. So the right moving electron is free to determine the triple accordingto experimenter Bobs final choice. Or, if you like, the universe conspires to makethis decision.

In case this has thoroughly bent your mind into a tangle, let me rephrase theentire experiment in simpler terms. Once Alices electron is measured in threeorthogonal directions there is no way that any information can fix the values of theright moving electrons spin along the 33 directions available for Bob to choose. So

if Bobs choice is free then the right moving electron must somehow determine itsown spin values (along Bobs three chosen directions).

The point is that the electron must have some minimal autonomy. Alternatively,the universe in the locality of the right moving electron has this autonomy.

I should say that this result of quantum physics is more than a curiosity, but itdoes not really impact upon the philosophical debate about human free will. If Bobdoes not have free will then the right moving electron does not need to be ascribeda free will. The Conway-Kochen theorem is still important for physics becauseit proves that the universe is incomplete. The universe does not contain enoughinformation to determine all future events from the complete historical information

available.If nothing else, this provides an element of causal freedom for non-physical realityto non-trivially effect the time evolution of the universe. It is an opening for humanfree will, but not quite an invitation.

8 Conclusions

So what does this all mean for the harmony of science and religion? Well, if we aretalking about T-religion, it is difficult to imagine any conflict. If you are talkingabout S-religion then there is plenty of conflict, and usually it is S-religion that is

false. Science can result in false theories and false predictions, but they tend to beself-correcting and do not survive for long. Science if thus a great filter for weedingout the more absurd religious claims. But almost by definition there cannot be aproper conflict between T-religion and science.

The difficulty faced by humans with free will is how to decide whether a move-ment is a T-religion or a false system of belief. From a Baha perspective this isa problem that cannot be resolved. It is the principle of independent investigationof truth which entails the right of all humans endowed with limited free will, toinvestigate and decide for themselves the claims of religion. Bahas would simplysay that if religion and science disagree then one or the other is wrong. If the science

is tight then the religious claim is false.

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* * *

This seems like a nice tidy place to end this meditation on science and religion.

Bear in mind that there are many interesting questions we have not resolved, likethe AI singularity, the nature of the soul, the operation of free will, and issues of howto universalize morality. Like the Chinese architects of antiquity we choose to leavesome things unfinished as a measure of respect for future thinkers and appropriatehumbleness before the All Mighty.

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personal perspective on harmony of science and religion

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