Thanks for sending me the link to this article. Well stated.
You wrote: “To be sure, science comes closer to confronting reality than does religion, in so far as scientists specialize in dehumanizing things, in subduing our penchant for projecting our biases onto the vastness of what could only be a bizarre, alien, impersonal wasteland.”:
What if…science is all wrong and the only thing that really exists is our own mental construct that gives rise to what we call reality? Wouldn’t this make science nothing more than a game of mentation — mere folly pretending to have the tools to survey a reality that is an artifact of imagination; the same vaporous reality that gave rise to science itself? How can we know? Further, practitioners of science are fraught with the same mindsets of religious people — fear, anxiety, hope, pessimism, optimism, and the tendency to jump to conclusions based on personal biases and preconceived notions. This is why, to less clear minds, science and its theories have been dismissed as bogus, unreliable, and without merit or value,
There is no reality and yet there is reality. Take your pick: one, the other, both, or none.
In regard to your use of the word religion, we’d have to define it a bit more precisely. Do you mean organized religion such as Islam or Buddhism? Certainly, organized religion is a self-contradictory, limited, and controlling organization meant to wrap everything up in a nice package so that the follower has no need to worry about life’s nagging problems: all the answers are contained in a box. And yet, out of religion there have been several figures throughout history who have, arguably, done a better job than science to explain and appreciate reality. Science, for example, offers nothing more than a clinical explanation of love, wonder, or appreciation — the things that we collectively agree make life worth living, A non-scientific approach is capable of valuing such feelings and placing them at the center of the enriching, purposeful life experience.
Returning to the premise of your article, it seems problematic to me that there should be a Theory of Everything if for no other reason than the fact that life is dynamic, continuously present, and complex. How can we stamp a meaning, purpose, and explanation on that which is beyond such things? The theory of everything idea is bound up in thought, and thought is only of the past. A theory of everything, as you suggest, is borne of hubris. It is yet another attempt, though seemingly more sophisticated and blessed by the god of science, to offer security to the egoic mind that yearns for answers, safety, pleasure, and relief from confusion and unpredictability that is a part of our life experience. Perhaps the Theory of Everything is a new religion disguised as science.
