Science cannot prove through their current methodology what human awareness is. Science cannot, therefore, develop a scientific model of consciousness. One major problem is that consciousness is subjective and personal and not available for objective, third-party scrutiny. Person-level frameworks and realities give neuroscientists big fits and make things very, very messy.
Another challenge is the mind/brain problem.
There are some reasons for thinking that the human mind and human brain are two distinct things and that consciousness may reside outside the formal realm of physical constraints and laws. For instance, ideas can be shared in ways that are not possible when sharing a physical piece of pie with another person. Ideas remain with the giver, but the pie does not. The natural sciences simply do not embrace non-physical phenomena in their models.
A third problem is that science does not incorporate values into its exploration of reality. Therefore, a final scientific Theory of Everything will only apply to mathematics and inert matter, rather than the relevancy of love and goodness on the spacetime stage.
Religion—since it promotes values—goes where physical science cannot go.
But according to the scientist/theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg, science can indeed be unified with theology—if scientific observation can be augmented with new rational and lawful principles. In a nutshell, Swedenborg developed a multi-level model of reality in which material forms lawfully removed their geometrical constraints and became substances of a higher order—even as substances and forms occupying a non-physical and spiritual arena!
Such a new model needs to be seriously examined by today’s scientific psyche. It will allow science to expand its research into new realms—both mental and spiritual and from rational principles! I have synthesized many of Swedenborg’s discoveries and visionary insights into a single book entitled Proving God. (You would have to read a good dozen or more of Swedenborg’s scientific and theological books to acquire enough material to create such a profound model of unification.)
Swedenborg’s ideas will ultimately elevate our worldviews of both science and religion for the 21st century! Interested?
