If you are not either a Blind believer nor a non believer.?

Question

Lets start a spot discussion on how a true scientific research can be proposed to investigate into spirituality. Please write logical sentences which can be understood by all people. Please don't through coments without proper thinking.

Thanks to the first few answerers (2 point seekers), that they haven't wasted my time. Thanks again!
Some answers are really interesting. Keep on adding....

Answer 1

Science, my friend, only points to the method which God uses to do things. Since we humans cannot see outside the universe in which we live, we are unable to gather hard evidence of that.
Knowledge of this type is called 'faith' (a firm belief in something for which there is no proof).
Seen in this light, spirituality is a subjective thing which cannot be measured in any way other than an individual's expression of it. It is, IOW, a circular argument.

Answer 2

Spirituality can't necisarily be proven or disproved in of itself, at least until consciousness is better understood. What can have investigation regarding it on the other hand are certain facets of belief, for example all scientific research available indicates that the universe as a whole and the earth are of vastly different ages and historians cast some ambiguity on the location of Jesus's birth.

Answer 3

I know there have been recent studies on the effect of prayer on medical patients. From what I understand, the presence of prayer improves the healing of the patients. Of course, the question arises whether it was the prayer itself (and the spiritual being answering it) or the comfort of the prayer that helped the patients heal. I do think there was a component of the research in which the patients hadn't known that they were being prayed for.

Hmm...how else can we dissect spiritual matters scientifically? Can we study other miracles? The effects of spirituality upon mental patients and emotionally disturbed people? On the growth of children? On marriages?

Could we study spiritual effects upon geology or astronomy?

Interesting stuff!

I think Einstein believed in God, but I'm not sure.

Addendum: someone mentioned mathematics. I believe there is an online essay about mathematics and God, perhaps mathematics being the language of God. Try a Yahoo search with those words: mathematics, God.

Answer 4

The Case for a Creator: Lee Strobel
A journalist investigated the claims of Christianity through scientific eyes. He spoke with many leading experts (actual scientists well-known for their contributions) and came to conclusions. I'm sure you can get this book at your local library or off Amazon.com for super cheap.
Case for Christianity: C.S. Lewis
He logically came to the conclusion that Chirstianity is the only thing that can answer life's questions. He started from the very beginning of his atheism and asked why. I know you can find this book at even high school libraries. Even cheaper than the first at Amazon.com.

Answer 5

To put it simply -- there's no such possibility. The closest you can get is neurological study of persons claiming to be in spiritual states. This research has been done and is on-going, involving the use of electroencephelograms and subjects who report strong spiritual experiences.

However, even in such research, the fundamental assumption must be that such events are purely neurological and environmental.

Science by definition operates on three fundamental axioms:

1. Mathematics and logic are valid. Truth is an inherantly logical proposition. Without logic, the truth-value of any fact could never be known, there would be no way to distinguish between a true fact and a false fact. Without logic, knowledge would be unattainable.

2. Observations, unaided and aided, are valid. However, aided observations must be supported by prior observations and mathematics. For example, before the theory of optics was discovered, a microscope would have been invalid; but through study of unaided observations of lenses and beams of light, the theory of optics was mathematically formulated, so the microscope is valid. A crystal gazing ball is still invalid, but if a way to define the effect mathematically and in a way that could be verified with unaided observations was found, it would become valid as well. Without being able to trust our observations, we could aquire no data on which to operate, and thus knowledge would be unattainable.

3. The supernatural, if it exists (note: no statement is made of its existence or non-existence, just a conditional), does not in any way interact with the natural world. If a supernatural involvement can be had, then nothing can be assured as true. If the deity that oversees gravity decides to change the universal gravitational constant, for example, all things we know will suddenly be invalid, and thus knowledge could not be attained.

It is important to recognize that none of these things is considered true; they are axioms. An axiom is a statement that must be accepted or not accepted on its own merits. However, as each of them can be shown to be necessary for knowledge, one must either accept these three things, or, one must accept that nothing at all can be known, let alone known to be true or false. So these axioms must be 'accepted' or 'held' to attain knowledge, even though their axiomic nature means they themselves cannot be proven.

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Contrary to what numerous people are stating, no scientific study published in any US or UK medical journal has ever shown a positive effect related to prayer. Only one such study has shown a statistically significant effect -- and that was a negative effect, meaning those who were prayed for (heart surgery patients) who were told they were prayed for and were prayed for did noticably worse as a group than did the group who was told they were being prayed for but were not, and the group who was told they were not being prayed for and were not.

I challenge anyone who says otherwise to provide the MLA citation for the article that shows a study showing positive results that are statistically significant.

Answer 6

By "Spirituality" most people mean something supernatural or not of this physical world. This puts any possible investigation out of the realm of scientific research. Science deals with things that are in the universe, not in some supernatural place. The whole idea of something that is supernatural means that it is not NATURAL, therefore it cannot be investigated by science.

Answer 7

Read Lee Strobel's book The Case for Christ. He was a legal editor for the Chicago Tribune. He was also an atheist. Until he did an investigation of the Bible, Jesus, and his resurrection.

Answer 8

The teachings of various religions or religious books can always be personally tried.

I mean in Malachi when the Lord talks about tithing He says "prove me now herewith" or in other words - "put me to the test." he challenges us to try living that principle and seeing for ourselves if we get the blessings that he promised would go with it.

When I say I know some principle or another is true - it's because I've personally tested it (tried living it) and found the results to be very good.

thanks

Answer 9

Spirituality is not measurable, repeatable or verifiable therere it is outside of the realm of scientific investigation.

Answer 10

Yes, let's use vital resources to investigate the existence of nothing. While we're at it, let's be sure to outlaw rational science such as stem cell research because it's murder.