Science and Spiritism
GEAE'S
Spiritist Messenger 051 - June 2004
Editorial
If
there is a
duty in life from which no one can escape, it is that of striving in
order to know thyself and to search for the truth.
Along
the way
we will find much help and we should not underestimate the achievements
of scientific knowledge and the assertions of the men of science and
the erudite. However, it is our own duty to seek and follow the path
that will eventually guide us towards the knowledge of ourselves and
reach the relative truth, for absolute truth does not belong to this
world.
Undoubtedly,
the contribution of scientific knowledge has had a great impact in many
of the humankind's achievements. Nevertheless, the opinion of men of
science ought not to be considered under all circumstances as being
necessarily and absolutely conclusive.
In
matters
related to faith and belief the majority of men of science and the
scientific community as a whole have upheld a position of intolerable
prejudice throughout the centuries. This idiosyncratic attitude had a
reasonable justification in the past due to the fact that the
narrow-minded sectarian religious movements would threaten anyone
who would dare divulge new ideas, and as we all know Science
was
kept at bay for over a millennium. However, now the situation
is
different, for in the civilized world, where scientific knowledge
flourishes, freedom of speech and religion prevail. Nevertheless, that
same position of vanity, pride, arrogance and intolerable prejudice is
yet a constant in the venues of the scientific community, when men of
science are called to cast their judgment in regard to these matters.
The majority of
men of science still deny the existence of the spirit and the
afterlife, and passionately try to make us all believe that we are
simple matter and that the annihilation will be complete with the
advent of what we know as “death”. There still
prevails
among these enthusiastic partisans of the materialistic ideas a
systematic contempt for the extraordinary work of psychic research
undertaken within the last two centuries by many men of science and
other erudite scholars in the field of spiritism, spiritualism and
other philosophic venues. The vast literature and the works of research
undertaken by men of the rank of William Crookes, Frederic Myers,
Joseph Olive Lodge, Arthur Conan Doyle, Gabriel Delanne, Ernesto
Bozzano, Robert Hare, James Hervey Hyslop, William James and many, many
others, are still kept under a cloud of suspicion and scorn.
This
paradoxical position of men of science gives us an idea of the
difficulties that we will face in our struggles to achieve
enlightenment and truth. Their attitude can only be understood under
the assertion made by Allan Kardec in item VII of the Introduction to
The Spirits' Book, which says:
“It
may
even be said that scientific men are more apt to be prejudiced than the
rest of the world, because each of them is naturally inclined
to
look at everything from the special point of view that has been adopted
by him;”
The
wide
majority of men of science are still trapped inside their high sense of
pride and prejudice and living under the dilemma depicted by Kardec,
that “of the anatomist, who in dissecting the human body,
looks
for the soul, and, as he does not find it under his scalpel, he
concludes that it does not exist.”
The erudite
spiritist author and scholar, Herminio C. Miranda, casts an insightful
and wise verdict in regard to this matter, in chapter 2 (Science in
Searching for the Spirit), in his interesting and delightful book Survival and
Communicability of the Spirits,
FEB 1975, in these words:
“The researcher
who desires to
search for the human spirit ought to abandon his preconceived ideas and
to give up from the ingenuity of want to jail it within a test tube in
order to exam it under the lens of a microscope”.
(Translated by the Editor)
The harsh
attitude of these men of science and their indifference to the reality
of the spirit and the afterlife should not be a source of distress to
us in our struggles to achieve enlightenment and progress. Let us
rather accept it as a challenge. Furthermore, it is good to remember
Allan Kardec's words within the aforementioned Introduction in regard
to the competence of Science to cast judgment on these matters:
“Science,
properly so called,
is therefore incompetent, as such, to decide the question of the truth
of Spiritism; it has nothing to do with it; and its verdict in regard
to it, whether favourable or otherwise, is of no weight.”
“We
see,
therefore, that the task
of deciding as to the truth or falsity of Spiritism does not fall
within the scope of physical science. When spiritist beliefs shall have
become generalised, when they shall have been accepted by the masses
(and, if we may judge by the rapidity with which they are being
propagated, that time can hardly be very distant), it will be with
those beliefs as with all new ideas that have encountered opposition;
and scientific men will end by yielding to the force of evidence. They
will be brought, individually, by the force of things, to admit ideas
that they now reject; and, until then, it would be premature to turn
them from their special studies in order to occupy them with a matter
which is foreign alike to their habits of thought and to their spheres
of investigation.”
Much
Peace
Antonio
Leite
- Editor