The Essence of Scientific Inquiry

I cringe at times when the usual sophomoric arguments for God are brought before us using pseudo-logical propositions that assume the scientific method is lacking in humility or in some other manner (i.e., that to not be God-centered is to be construed as man-centered,arrogant and fallacious). This is, of course, a weak and frantic effort to dispel scientific or philosophical reluctance to accept their notion of deity.Calling it experimental and, therefore, a scientific method of inquiry, to simply “act as though there is a God” has little or no merit. This is an idea that is bloated with childish magical thinking.  It is a mistake to compare this method to scientific experimentation. For one thing, it asks the scientific practitioner to abandon the first principle of the method: never accept anything "a priori". To do so would be to encourage the experimenter to follow a prejudice and therefore corrupt the inquiry; and, thus, the results. The essence of the scientific method is designed to solve mysteries and not to harbor or nurture them.

The fact that magical thinking has worked for some of us does not close the circle on the proposition there is a God any more than the scientific method defines in its own terms that there is not. Science functions best without faith and that, if there is a such thing as God, then science will eventually discover God. 

Many A.A.’s have found a power sufficient to relieve their alcoholism without such magical thinking through a variety of meditation practices that delve the mysteries of the innermost-self uncovering a dynamic relationship with the sublime. For instance,some forms of Buddhism do so without the need for any deity at all.                                                                                          

Worst of all, magical thinking damages faith and spiritual progress far more than atheism because, when it fails, despair and disillusionment follows. Aren’t we already bombarded with enough of these in our daily affairs? Ignorance is a far greater enemy to spiritual evolution than the discernment of constructive skeptics.

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