You can mealy-mouth it all you want, but the simple truth is that so-called "spirituality" and science only overlap in obsucre fields of neuroscience where researchers study what is going on in people's brains when they switch to different states of conciousness.

Rationality and religion are not the same, no matter what bizarre sematics you use to try to equate them.

I promised myself I wouldn't come back to this forum after all the trolling and attacks, but here I am, responding anyway. I have slim hope you're interested in the information I offer, but I write from other readers, who might be interested.

You must be smarter than Einstein, Tobbar. And smarter than other physicists, like John Wheeler, who seriously asks the question, "How does something come from nothing?" and proposes that matter and energy rest on a foundation of information, or, "it from bit."

Or David Bohm, who wrote, "...space and time are no longer the dominant factors determining the relationships of dependence or independence of different elements. Rather, an entirely different sort of basic connection of elements is possible, from which our ordinary notions of space and time, along with those of separately existent material particles, are abstracted as forms derived from the deeper order." This, from Bohm's physics theory that not only addresses consciousness and other spiritual concepts, but explains why our perception of basic causality - from the chemistry you describe to complex organisms - is illusory. (Can you say, "quantum entanglement?" I knew you could!)

From Einstein himself:

[Science and religion have] strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind ...a legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist.

Right now, some tags are behaving differently on Salon's comments than they behave on most other sites. I'm placing this here to test the format issues that have appeared lately, and provide Salon with a sample letter showing them.

These words are marked with "em" tags, which should italicize ("i" tags) them. If they're not allowed, in the same way "a" tags aren't, they should disappear as "a" tags do instead of behaving wrongly (for example, "wrongly" is enclosed in "a href" tags in this sentence).

Trying the strong ("strong") and boldface ("b") tags, which should look the same.

• This should be a bulleted list. (My last few lists have been unbulleted.)
• This is the second item in a bulleted list.

Note: in the preview function, all appears correct except the "em" tag.

Hope this helps!

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_phrase_elements.asp

Tobbar, I never said anything about any specific religions. I never put words in Wheeler's mouth that weren't his (that would be bearing false witness ;-). Sprirituality does not equal Wotan or a resurrection. It comes in many flavors, and encompasses consciousness (something I'm pretty sure you experience) and the sense of wonder many an atheist scientist feels at the universe.

You are not addressing the context of the argument. You say, science and spirituality have nothing to say to each other. Others better than both of us say they do. That's the extent of my claim. I lack your pride; I cannot claim Einstein, et. al., got it wrong, since I lack their expertise and insight. I'm honored to correspond with someone as wise and as deeply educated as you must be, to be able to do so.

Please, don't put words in my mouth as straw men to knock down. That's you being the "loser," not me. Since I don't think the question can be answered, I'm not trying to win anything, except perhaps respect between both sides for each other. Just furthering the debate and promoting open-minded thought.

I am not selling anything; I am a strong agnostic and have been all of my adult life. The first half of that agnosticism was as an atheist, the second as a religious person. In both situations I knew my understanding to be ironic and liable to change (by any chance, did you even read my starred letter in this thread?).

I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over :-)

Adiós, mis amigos! Have a lovely Easter weekend!

You mean matter and energy on smaller scales operate different than they do on larger scales? The hell you say!

Actually, Wheeler and Bohm are saying that this traditional view of the separation of quantum mechanical and macro universe is probably misleading. So no, they don't act differently. That's my point.

Ok, *now* I'm through.

You may all now breathe a sigh of relief and post ad hominem attacks about my unscientific, superstitious belief in scholarly scientific research :-)

Very glad to be of service. CSS (I'm assuming that's the challenge here) can be quite vexing at times. Looking at my earlier post, I see all is well :-)

That page, and the two below, have been guiding lights to me on many a frustrated coding day.

Enjoy!

http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/css/propindex/all.htm

http://www.cssplay.co.uk/ (this is teh fun :-)