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Newsletter Nr. 744
Amsterdam, November 16th, 2018



‘SPIRITUAL SCIENCE’ IS A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS - Response to Steve Taylor - FRANK VISSER

When unconventional religion and unconventional science are used to argue for a "spiritual science", things can become pretty confused and confusing. That at least was my experience when reading Steve Taylor's "Beyond Materialism", a summary of his new book Spiritual Science (Watkins, 20018), which is subtitled: "Why Science Needs Spirituality to Make Sense of the World". Science tries to rationally understand observed phenomena, whereas religion introduces mysteries such as Spirit or the Ground of Being or Oneness or the Absolute that supposedly permeate everything. How can these two disciplines possibly be fruitfully combined?

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/visser130.html


UNDERSTANDING MATTER - Why a Spiritual Perspective Needs Science to Make Sense of the World - DAVID LANE

I perversely enjoyed Steve Taylor's recent essay ["Beyond Materialism"] precisely because I completely disagree with it. Indeed, I can summarize my disagreement with his thesis quite easily by taking his subtitle “Why science needs a spiritual perspective to make sense of the world” and reversing it into “Why a spiritual perspective needs science to make sense of the world.”

This is not to say that Taylor's essay is without merit, but only that in championing his anti-materialism views he is arguing against a bogey man of his own making. For example, Taylor makes grandiose and all-encompassing statements which betray the very nuance necessary to make a cogent argument, particularly when he claims that “Materialism denies the reality of mind,” neglecting to distinguish who precisely holds such a view or to point out that empirical scientists don't deny the mind as such, but only that it should be understood as part and parcel of the brain that generates it.

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/lane149.html