Science vs. religion : what scientists really think - File PDF

Spiritual Entrepreneurs 55of their past). Rather than trying to reconcile science with a particular religioustradition, as religious thinkers have done for ages, this group of scientists saysthat spirituality is a better fit with modern science than is any traditional religion.12 In fact, this group could be part of a small movement arguing that scienceand spirituality are deeply connected. (For example, in 2005, the Dalai Lama wasthe keynote speaker at the 35th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience,where he spoke mainly on embracing meditation within science and triedactively to disconnect this practice from any particular Buddhist belief.) 13 Thisgroup, the spiritual entrepreneurs, sees religion and spirituality in distinctlydifferent terms, with many viewing the two as nonoverlapping categories.Contrary to some secularist accounts of religious change in American society,natural and social scientists at elite research universities have more of aspiritual impulse than I would have expected. While different from that of thegeneral population—which is often characterized by angels and demons—scientists’spirituality has implications for the others-focused practices thatresearchers often find lacking in the lives of spiritual Americans in the generalpopulation.Spirituality as Different From Organized ReligionEvelyn thinks that religion often becomes a way to control people’s thoughtsand lives. Spirituality, by contrast, fosters individual freedom. It is this sense ofindividuality—being able to pick and choose as they make spiritual sense oftheir world—that appeals to people like Robert Bellah’s Sheila and the countlessnumber of Americans who define their spirituality in their own terms. Thedifference between scientists and most of the nonscientists who see themselvesas spiritual is that members of the general population often compile bits fromvarious forms of religion (a spiritual salad bar) to put together an individualizedinner life that works for them. The effort of the spiritual scientist is moreabout pursuing reality and discovering the truthful aspects of spirituality thatwill be most in line with science. Most often scientists see this individual pursuitof truth, which allows science to stand in the face of criticism, as completelyincongruent with religion. For Evelyn, religion connotes a sort of“groupthink.” Spiritual entrepreneurs, on the other hand, conform to nothingbut their discovered truth, or search for meaning. And these individual pursuitsof truth can often lead to an outward focus rather than shallow preoccupationwith oneself.Scientists who are spiritual entrepreneurs do not consider religious communitieslikely sources of truth. Nearly 40 percent of the spiritually minded