Many scientists would agree. And many religious people would also seem to agree, if one were to go by the number of anti-science religious people in the world.
Yet this approach is flawed. The way I see it, the quest for science and the quest for spirituality are the same quest. The quest for truth.
If you pare it down to its core — the fundamental question in spirituality is: “what is the nature of reality?”
Permutations of this question include “what is the nature of consciousness?” (my true question and ultimate quest). “What caused existence?” “Why does life exist?” “How did reality come to be?” etc.
But these are also the fundamental questions which drive science.
All the greatest scientific discoveries came about because someone asked the fundamental spiritual question “what is the nature of reality?” and decided to try and find out.
The schism between science and spirituality occurred in the West due to institutionalised religion’s attempt to maintain a monopoly on spirituality and thus control their followers. Rigid religious institutions opposed the freethinking spiritual scientists such as Galileo, Newton and Darwin, because their findings challenged the Church’s dogma and claim to ownership of spirituality (ironically an approach that is opposed to the very nature of true spirituality). As such, “spirituality” gradually became seen as something that was opposed to science. And the fact that science was able to debunk many of the claims of organised religion (such as the age of the earth), meant many people thought they thereby debunked spirituality.
In fact, this perspective is incorrect. Religion is not the same as spirituality, although many people may find spiritual truths through the various rituals, practices and mythologies of their chosen religion. Ultimately, once something proclaims to know the full truth about Reality, and tries to shut down further exploration and questioning, that is no longer spirituality, but dogma.
The quest for science is inherently a profoundly spiritual quest.
The scientific method is a “dharma”, a particular “method or pathway” to find truths about the nature of reality. (It’s not the only method, as there are some questions that can never be fully answered via the scientific method, such as the nature of subjective experience, and what caused the Big Bang.)
The problem is that many scientists and “pseudoscience spiritualists” seem to be trapped in dualism. Almost every scientist believes in materialism, and scoffs at any notion of spirituality as “woo” because they assume that spirituality is something different to what they’re observing. Like when people tried to find the weight of the soul via science, because they assumed that the spirit was something separate from the body.
Recently someone tried to mock the theory of panpsychism by claiming that people who believe in panpsychism/pantheism think “a single electron is conscious, which is absurd”. Well yes that example is absurd (and a strawman argument), because the concept of a single electron existing by itself with no relation to anything else in the universe is absurd and a figment of a materialist’s imagination.
Meanwhile the anti-science spiritualists are ones who are also trapped in dualism — they intuit that spirituality is real, but they then think they have to deny science.
Both approaches are flawed.
I know that Reality can be observed and described in many different ways. Science is one of them. Mathematics is another. Music is another. Art is another. Dance is another. Philosophy is another. Storytelling is another. Etc. They all describe the endless permutations of this great effervescence we call Reality or The Cosmos or Life or God or The Universe.
There is no separation between what scientists observe as “material reality” and “the spirit”. They are the same. Everything is spirit/energy/vibration, and everything is part of the matrix of consciousness.
