| FORUMS | SEARCH | SITE MAP | CONTACT US | |||||||||||||
|
An Attempt at Scientific and Religious IntegrationFollowing these speculations, the author continued to ponder over the reason (and its scientific significance) why the vast religious majority firmly believed (1) that God created the world, and (2) that God created man in His own image. If God created both the cosmos and man, and if God is cosmic Mind, then might we not assume that cosmic determinism resulted in or created man, and thus that both man and his mental functioning are symbolic projections of God or cosmic Mind, rather than the reverse? Might we not also assume that man's religious convictions and fantasies have been guided and shaped by the primary, somatically rooted origin of both his creation and creator? And is it possible that psychodynamic formulations which identify God as a mere symbolic representation of an individual's father or parents have only scratched the "ontogenetic" mental surface of our cosmic phylogenetic organismic existence? Has cosmic denial misled scientists into confusing and reversing the manifest and latent "dream content" of man's origin and existence in a manner analogous to that whereby the primary cosmic-cerebellar forces and determinants of man's mental and dyslexic functioning were denied and fallaciously attributed to only secondarily related, manifest emotional and cortical variables, respectively? The author's associations then turned to the contradictions existing between the biblical account of man's origin and the Darwinian account of man's phylogenetic derivation from animal forms. Although both accounts appeared mutually contradictory, and thus "paradoxical," the author intuitively assumed that both the religious and Darwinian theories of man's origin were equally valid, and that a scientific conceptualization was missing which would explain and integrate both theories. In an attempt to resolve the conflicting theories of man's existence, the author reasoned as follows. If the biblical data as to man's creation are viewed symbolically, their psychodynamic analysis might indicate that God or cosmic Mind is, and has been, "intentionally" directing phylogenetic forms to develop, and thus approach His image, over an evolutionary time span. Just as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, phylogeny must be recapitulating, and thus demonstrating its origin from, cosmic development. In retrospect, one was forced to conclude that cosmic Mind has determined phylogenetic and ontogenetic development or evolution. Needless to say, the assumption that cosmic determinism created both inanimate and animate (or organismic) determinism appears objectively sound, and consistent with both religious and scientific theories of the origin of man and matter. As a result of this reasoning, both the religious and Darwinian views of earth's and man's creation have been harmonized and integrated by means of a holistic and cosmically unbiased psychodynamic formulation, which, in addition, suggests that both religious and nonreligious theories and convictions are of equal scientific validity, and thus worthy of exploration. For "real" science and understanding to progress meaningfully, both religious science and "science science" must be integrated and harmonized with one another, and the sibling-like rivalry and competition between the two must be psychoanalyzed and resolved-for their "neurotically" determined conflict is, and has been, neither truly religious nor truly scientific. In an effort to comprehend dyslexia and related mental functioning, the author began his research career as a confident agnostic psychiatrist, became an amateur neurologist, and then a humble religious scientist. In retrospect, man could neither have contemplated nor accepted cosmic, organismic, and inanimate Mind in other than the religious concepts of God and Heaven. Inasmuch as religion has supplied man with cosmic insights which science could not, and the reverse as well, it appears obvious that only an integrated religious-scientific "multidisciplinary" approach will enable God's servants to properly treat God's children.
|