Free Thought, Faith, and Science (ePub)

FREE THOUGHT, FAITH AND SCIENCE: FINDING UNITY THROUGH SEEKING TRUTH By Roger Pullin. This book covers a hot topic - can faith, defined as personal belief and trust in God and not as a religious affiliation, ever be compatible with science? Dr. Roger Pullin argues forcefully that faith and science are complementary paths to truth, with all truthful spiritual insights and all truthful disclosures through mathematics and science coming from God, and that through faith and science we approach one whole body of truth. He writes as a marine biologist with a long career in research, teaching and consulting, mostly in tropical developing countries, and as a believer. He is an Associate Member of Christians in Science and the Society of Ordained Scientists, a Member of the Science and Religion Forum and a Member and former Elder of the Union Church of Manila, Philippines. Dr. Pullin draws together threads from works across theology and science and from personal experiences to offer fresh perspectives on what he calls Free Thought. Free Thought has capital letters to distinguish it from our basic thought about the practicalities of life - what to eat, what to wear, how to dodge traffic etc. Free Thought is not freethinking, as defined conventionally by an outcome of dissent from some religious or other established order. No process defined by a specific outcome can be called free. Free Thought can have any outcome, including agnosticism, atheism and faith. Free Thought is founded on free will. Everyone is free to explore all available information and to choose what to believe. No one knows what anyone else truly believes. Free Thought is truly free. Every human self is a unique combination of a material mind-body with a spiritual soul. Free Thought is the integrated and iterative processing of information from the material and spiritual realms, in one or more common nonmaterial formats, across an individual mind-soul interface. Free Thought connects the material and spiritual realms in every person. Our Free Thought and mind-soul interfaces make us the agents by which God and the spiritual force for evil can bring about change in the material realm. The laws of nature are not suspended to allow so-called miracles. We have free will. The material realm works through free process. From this perspective, Dr. Pullin reviews the human condition, faith, science, the battlefields on which we seek truth in the midst of lies and nonsense and make moral choices, the need for reformations in organized religion and revolutions in science and the prospects for faith-science unity. He recommends expansion of faith-science quest for truth, by scientific appraisals of subjective evidence from within believers and nonbelievers and by considering the implications of a spiritual realm for brain and consciousness research and a theory of everything. This book's 11 chapters can be adapted as a series of lectures. It depicts a model and mechanisms for Free Thought in a 6-part Figure 1, the backdrop to which forms the cover design, and a synthetic Figure 2. Its 5 Appendices provide definitions of terms, summaries of the author's beliefs and background, reviews of related literature and a questionnaire for readers. Its total length is 431 pages, plus a user-friendly Index.