Letters to the Sky
Letters to the Sky is a podcast about waking up to what you are. We explore awakening and nonduality through honest conversation, irreverent humor, and stories drawn from many traditions and our own lives. Instead of fixed answers, we invite listeners into direct inquiry. Be right where you are. No dogma. Just the ongoing experiment of seeing through illusion and resting in what remains.
Letters to the Sky
Science vs Religion
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Adam and Stephan begin a long conversation about the limitations, merits, intersections, and differences between Science and Religion.
Copyright 2026 by Letters to the Sky
Stephan Downes:
Hi. I'm Stephan Downes.
Adam Rizvi:
And I'm Adam Rizvi.
Stephan Downes:
And this is Letters To The Sky, a podcast about the metaphysical iconoclasts, philosophical visionaries and religious leaders of the world.
Adam Rizvi:
Whether you consider yourself religious, spiritual, neither or something in between, we invite you to take a deep dive with us down metaphysical rabbit holes, and learn to see your life from a new perspective.
Adam Rizvi:
All right. Something special today. Stephan, would you do us the honors of explaining what we're trying new today?
Stephan Downes:
Are you not even going to say hi and ask me how I been and all that pleasantries? All those pleasantries?
Adam Rizvi:
Hey Stephan, how are you doing?
Stephan Downes:
Hey, Adam. I'm doing great. Thank you so much.
Adam Rizvi:
What pleasantries are there in your life?
Stephan Downes:
I mean, not really anything. I've been getting into art lately. I don't remember if I told everybody that. I don't know if I was doing this last time, I signed up for an art school. I forget it. I'm sorry if you've heard this again.
Adam Rizvi:
I think you had just-
Stephan Downes:
I'm sorry, if you've heard this again. No? Okay.
Adam Rizvi:
No, I think you just started with your art classes. We were doing St. Theresa about a month ago. No, three weeks ago.
Stephan Downes:
Okay. So, okay, cool. Well, I finished my first one. It's awesome. I love it. It's teaching me a lot about myself. So, that's mostly what's up with me. What about you?
Adam Rizvi:
Art has a tendency to do that. I've heard someone say, I don't know who it was, but that every piece of art is a self portrait.
Stephan Downes:
That sounds like something that an elementary school art teacher would tell their students.
Adam Rizvi:
Oh, okay. I was going to imply that-
Stephan Downes:
It's probably someone really profound and one of the like most famous artists of all time. There's a giant mosquito to my left. Yeah, I'm not here. Keep going. Okay, we do have a special topic today. So we actually have a series of special topics and this is something that Adam and I have talked a ton about in the past before we had the podcast, and it's something that's going to be a series for sure, because the topic is so huge and that, the topic is science versus religion. Maybe you don't need the versus. It could be an and.
Adam Rizvi:
Oh, we need the versus.
Stephan Downes:
Okay, it's going to be versus. Yeah, so we're going to talk about science versus religion and spoiler alert for all the people who like spoilers. If you don't earmuffs, Adam's wrong about everything.
Adam Rizvi:
I'm not going to argue with that. If I agreed with your statement, would that invalidate your statement?
Stephan Downes:
No, because you're agreeing with my statement that everything you're going to say is going to be wrong.
Adam Rizvi:
Right but. So if I say everything I'm going to say is going to be wrong.
Stephan Downes:
About science and religion.
Adam Rizvi:
Oh.
Stephan Downes:
Don't play with me. I know exactly what you're trying to do old man.
Adam Rizvi:
Old man.
Stephan Downes:
Grandpa.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, yeah. Science versus religion. You know, I like the versus because it really speaks to the tension that's been there for thousands of years, maybe hundreds of years. I'm not sure how far back this problem goes, but maybe we're going to talk through this and somehow explore the possibilities of it being science and religion.
Stephan Downes:
Hopefully not.
Adam Rizvi:
Or dissolving.
Stephan Downes:
I also want to say like, it's very ... I think probably hundreds of years is probably pretty accurate and ... Although well I'll be open to thousands and it's important these days because we grew up with any exposure to Western civilization or not even, but like any civilization. We grew up in a scientific world. You know, the most ubiquitous technology that we use, the most simple technology is based in science and the scientific process. And at the same time, there are a lot of us that are very interested in religion and spirituality. And I'm probably not alone in, that there's kind of a push and pull, you know. There are times when the science brains going and there are times when the religious brain is going and where do they meet? Do they meet? Can they meet? Is one fundamentally more true than the other? All of these kinds of questions that I think, you and I aren't alone in having. So we wanted to have that conversation and I think it's worth just pointing out real quick, that we're using word religion. You know, we considered using spirituality, but spirituality in terms of, especially Western spirituality or the spirituality that most Americans now, is definitely a product of religion, not the other way around, so, to us anyway so.
Adam Rizvi:
Speak for yourself, buddy.
Stephan Downes:
Okay. I will.
Adam Rizvi:
Well, literally right before we started recording, you're the one who said spirituality predates religion.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah. I mean, if you think about like the history of humanity, before there was a structure of religion, there was like people who probably had, very loosely, held beliefs about things that weren't the physical world.
Adam Rizvi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative) Sure. Actually, this is a great time for Merriam-Webster to join us.
Stephan Downes:
All right. Tell us how's ... Is it a Mr? A Mrs? Something if it's either? Nothing?
Adam Rizvi:
I don't know, actually. Webster I'm sure is ... There's got to be someone listening to this right now.
Stephan Downes:
Comrade Merriam-Webster.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, exactly.
Stephan Downes:
All right, go ahead.
Adam Rizvi:
So, you know, this is a great question. Before I go into definitions, we should talk about who are we to be having this conversation. And the reason why I'm bringing this up, is because a friend of mine recently was listening to our episodes, but she came in on it after not having listened for six or seven episodes.
Stephan Downes:
Well that's silly.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
Hey, Adam's friend, can you go back and listen to them in order?
Adam Rizvi:
To listen to them in order.
Stephan Downes:
Thank you.
Adam Rizvi:
But one of the things that she asked was, could you give a reminder as to who you are, like what's your background and why are you even having these conversations? Which I think after 12, maybe 13 episodes is not a bad thing to do. So why don't we start with you Stephan, and how does this relate to our conversation?
Stephan Downes:
Sure. I mean a background about me, I grew up pretty normal for a lot of people. I didn't really have... I was not like forced into any sort of religion. My parents went to an Episcopal Church when I was in Maryland and I grew up in Maryland. It was pretty light. I don't remember any fear of original sin or anything like that. You know, I think people call Episcopalians like Catholic light. So I grew up in that and then when I moved, I moved to Colorado when I was seven and my parents tried to take me to other like Christian denominations, more in the Protestant realm. And I continually got kicked out of Sunday school as a kid because I wouldn't stop asking questions that apparently contradicted with the way they were teaching Bible. So I kind of stopped having any sort of relationship with religion and my parents were just kind of like, "Okay, I guess it's you know, for him." And then when I was 18 ... Yeah, I think it was 18. I had recently dropped out, flunked out of my first year of college and I got lost in Crestone, Colorado. I was with a friend and we saw someone driving who looked like he was wearing a robe and he was bald. And we said, "I bet he's a monk. Let's follow him and see where he goes. Maybe he's going to a Monastery or an Ashram." And turns out we were correct and I completely got hit by the bug, the spiritual religion bug, and I have been on that path ever since. I'm 35. So almost ... What's that? 18, 35, something like 16 some years? I don't know.
Adam Rizvi:
Wow.
Stephan Downes:
Somewhere around there, which is almost half my life at this point. And so I have been... So I "Grew up," spiritually in a Hindu, predominantly Hindu world, although it's not like strictly partisan Hindu. And then more recently, I have also included Buddhism in that and kind of blending the two worlds, because I find a lot of the two worlds are at some level quite semantic, which I can kind of push through.
Adam Rizvi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative) Wow.
Stephan Downes:
So, I'm interested in these things because it's become a huge part of my life. And I also have an undergraduate degree. I have a bachelor's degree in molecular biology. So I was at least somewhat trained in how to think like a scientist and the kind of questions that science can and can't answer. The limits of my kind of knowledge that I can see, are things like experimental design and you know, the realities of proof and things like that, that to get into the real nitty gritty of science itself as a concept. So I'm interested in those things.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, yeah. Wow, thank you. Actually, I don't think you ever shared that level of detail.
Stephan Downes:
Oh okay.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
You're welcome.
Adam Rizvi:
I'm glad I asked that.
Stephan Downes:
What about you?
Adam Rizvi:
Well, yeah.
Stephan Downes:
Spoiler alert, religions major.
Adam Rizvi:
Spoiler. Well yeah, yeahI can start with that actually.
Stephan Downes:
You don't have to.
Adam Rizvi:
I did a comparative religion major at the University Of Rochester. My two primary teachers were Professor Muller-Ortega, PEMO he used to go by, Paul Edward Muller-Ortega and Douglas Brooks, both of which had experience in and deep knowledge of various Hindu traditions, in particular goddess traditions of Southern and Northern India. So I would say my exposure to the Hindu path really began around that time of my life. I was raised predominantly in the Muslim tradition, specifically Shia Muslim, but my mother was raised Catholic. And so I had a very regular exposure to Catholicism. I would go to visit my French grandparents every summer when I was a kid and we would attend mass and I would be expected to behave as a good Christian Catholic kid would. And if I didn't, my grandparents would be sure to tell me often and I'd wear my Sunday's best and I grew to ... I think that was the beginning of my love for the world famous guy named Jesus Christ. He's a cool guy, cool dude. He's a great symbol too, great symbol across the world, but of course there are similar symbols that go by different names and different traditions. And then I would say in the last 10 years, there's a great interest of Buddhism as well. The non-dual traditions, Mahayana particularly and Vajrayana Buddhism, which we can go into. So yeah, I would say I've had a very multifaceted religious background and-
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, you absolutely did.
Adam Rizvi:
In terms of ... oh, I forgot to even mention this. I'm a physician and of course a lot of knowledge, I guess, in terms of science and how science is structured and how it can be used, what it's good for, what it's not so good for, but I'd like to dive into that. Without further ado, let me-
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, let's do it.
Adam Rizvi:
Let me define science and religion. And then for good measure, I'm going to define spirituality as well as per Merriam-Webster and then we should ... Let's dive a little bit deeper into, why is this conversation even happening? I know this is actually age old, right? This conversation.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, of course.
Adam Rizvi:
So we should talk about why is it age old. Let's first create the context of what the arguments are.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, go for it. All right, we'll throw out some definitions and then jump into that.
Adam Rizvi:
All right. So, religion, "The state of someone being religious or the service and worship of God or the supernatural. Commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance." So yeah, I think I liked the first one, "The service and worship of God or the supernatural." I think that really encapsulates what most people would consider that word to mean. Next is science. "Science is the state of knowing. Knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding. Two, a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study." That is a fascinating definition. "A department of systematized knowledge as an object of study." That's quite broad. You can absolutely apply that to many aspects of life.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, yeah. You can apply that to Buddhism right now.
Adam Rizvi:
Right, yeah, yeah. A spirituality, "Of, or relating to, or effecting the spirit, the incorporeal and then the secondary definition, "Of, or relating to sacred matters." I like that. I like that.
Stephan Downes:
Okay, yeah I like it too.
Adam Rizvi:
All right. So those are our definitions of religion, science and spirituality. So Stephan, why is this an age old conversation? What's your understanding of this?
Stephan Downes:
Well, so I don't come at it from any sort of academic perspective, which I guess is, that's why we're here. We're just kind of two guys talking about this. I think there are a lot of people who could talk about the different types of knowledges and how they are defined and how they're differentiated. You know, religion is something across religions that makes really grand claims to ultimate truth or relative truth, to use Buddhist terminology and I don't know that science does. I think that scientists tend to.
Adam Rizvi:
Oh, that's a good distinction.
Stephan Downes:
I actually don't think that scientists can answer those kinds of questions, due to the own its self-imposed limitations, which are great. They've allowed us to do whole lot and improve life for a great number, for you know, everyone on the planet. So in most people's minds, they're competing because they both try to answer big questions and people tend to conflate the two, and I personally don't think they need to. I think they're completely able to function on their own without the other, and that doesn't take away from either.
Adam Rizvi:
That's interesting. I agree with you. I think the fundamental premise is...
Stephan Downes:
No, no. Please disagree with me. We can't have a fight if you don't disagree with me, Adam.
Adam Rizvi:
Okay. Well, let me start off by saying, I agree with the fact that ... I agree with the perspective that both science and religion are trying to answer big questions. I wanted to go deeper though.
Stephan Downes:
Go for it, yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
Which is what are those questions? I'll throw a couple out, and then I'd like to try to see how science and religion would answer those questions, because I do think that they're different.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, yeah. Go for it.
Adam Rizvi:
At least on the surface. So where did we come from, right? That's one question and where are we going, right? Is another one. And then here's the third one, why? Big question mark. Like why? Why does anything exist at all? What is the point of existence? What is the meaning behind existence? Those are some really big questions. So I would say, where did we come from? Where are we going? And why? Those are three big questions. I'm sure there's others, but that really is ... Those are some meaty questions.
Stephan Downes:
They are, yeah. Do you want to dive into the different ways...
Adam Rizvi:
Well, I would love to see ... Let's see how science and religion would answer, where did we come from.
Stephan Downes:
Do you want to pick a religion to talk about, in the context of this? Just because ...
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, exactly. As I was saying this, I was like, "Well, different ..." Yeah, let's pick a couple. Obviously, I have some familiarity with Islam and Christianity. You can offer perspectives in Buddhism and Hinduism, that might be an interesting. Not that either of us are experts in any of those religions, but we have passing experience with them.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, yeah. Well, okay. So the first question is where do we come from? Right? That was your first one?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, what would science say? Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
Okay. So science has become from, the universe comes from something called the Big Bang. And now I'm actually not familiar with whether science has come up with what existed before the Big Bang. So the fundamental, if I could ... I'm summarizing here, it's probably for summary, but you know, if you have the universe, the Big Bang you know, I think everyone's familiar who's listening, with the idea that all the matter in the universe came from this extraordinarily small, relatively for sure, almost infinitesimally small piece of matter and energy that exploded, so to speak, this Big Bang and that exploded into the universe we have here. And so that is the where we came from. Now for me, the questions that are still out there, I know that scientists are, for example, into the first few microseconds or milliseconds of the Big Bang. But the question is, if that piece of matter was somewhere that it exploded, where was that? If we consider the universe three-dimensional, whatever dimensional reality that we currently operate in with all the rules of laws of science, what was there before the Big Bang, right? What did that matter exist in? And was it somehow different or the same? And you know...
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
There's lots of really cool thought observations about that and I guess what I would say where science thinks we came from.
Adam Rizvi:
One thing I'd probably add into that is that I think, if I have this correct, that time itself as a construct and space itself as a construct actually expanded with, with all of creation from the moment. So to ask the question of, what came before the Big Bang is tricky, because that implies that time was independent of that expansion, which you know astrophysicists might say...
Stephan Downes:
Okay, okay.
Adam Rizvi:
Is not. Like, the construct of time came and expanded with...
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
With the universe. And then the same is implied with...
Stephan Downes:
Interesting.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, with space. So that's why it's hard to say, well what happened before the Big Bang, because you're now removing the construct of time from that expansion.
Stephan Downes:
Well, I understand from a scientific perspective why, but like, and someone who's good at logic can correct me here, but doesn't the existence of one thing that started, imply something before it, that it came from? Like like, doesn't something beginning imply something for it to begin from or not?
Adam Rizvi:
I see what you're saying.
Stephan Downes:
Like you can't just have a beginning. That's like ... I don't know, it doesn't work, does it?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, yeah.
Stephan Downes:
Does it? Someone can correct me. You know, these kind of like formal logic stuff, I've never been, I guess, super great at.
Adam Rizvi:
You know, this is definitely, keep in mind readers, we do have the core of the...
Stephan Downes:
Whoever is reading this podcast. Oh no, that's not true. We have transcripts. Sorry go ahead.
Adam Rizvi:
Or listeners, I should just say. We are going to come back to this major step. One more additional tangent. There are theories out there that perhaps the Big Bang is one among many, and then there were multiple realities, or I think they call it membranes that touched and at the point of touching, a universe sprang forth and the Big Bang occurred. That sort of expands things even further. I think suffice it to say, there are a lot of theories out there, but there is a lot of data. There are data to suggest that the universe has been expanding. And then recently, because of what was captured on Doppler Redshift and the Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation was that the universe would not contract again, but then would continue to expand into a cold, cold Immensely vast existence, or the space between atoms would become so, so far apart that there wouldn't be any cohesion there. So they call it a cold, cold future to use very hyperbolic terms. Yeah, but disconcerting a little bit.
Stephan Downes:
Okay, okay. So, all right. We've gone like right in to like the edge of science, so to speak, on the questions that's trying to answer as far as where we came from.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
But what about religion?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Well, I'll tell you that the Judeo-Christian.
Stephan Downes:
Tell me the Judeo-Christian.
Adam Rizvi:
The Judeo Christian. So in the... I'll use a quote from the Bible. "Before Abraham, I am," which is this idea that there is a presence that existed before time, before creation. And the way that, that sentence, that that phrase ends in, "I am," which is present tense rather than before Abraham, I was, is particularly powerful because it immediately jolts the brain out of a temporal construct. In the Islamic tradition, depending on how mystic you go, whether you go deep into the Sufi tradition or in the mainstream Muslim tradition, you have God which created ... God being source of all creation um, brought forth the light of creation, Noode, right, in the Islamic or the Arabic term. And then that light was imbued in various forms. And one of the first forms in particular of humanity, was Adam or Adam in the Islamic tradition and then you have multiple human beings after that. And of course, in the Judeo-Christian ... Sorry, in the Christian tradition, you have Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden and all of that. Now there's a lot to be said about whether that is allegorical, whether that's metaphorical or if that's literal. But of course we have a whole array of radical belief in all of those things. So that's where we came from, from a Judeo-Christian tradition.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, yeah. So I think, and again, this is something that, especially with Hinduism that you're going to know more about than I am, but I'm going to try and bastardize it anyway.
Adam Rizvi:
Do it. Bastardize it.
Stephan Downes:
So, like first of all, I think when it comes to Hinduism, which is where, just for the record, Buddhism came from as well. So Buddhism was also a religion of India, even though it's not really found there today. And then Hinduism itself came from you know ... Well, let me think. Hinduism doesn't exist before Europeans were in India, because there was no sort of like idea of a shared religion that Indian people had. But you know, the Indian religions so to speak if you want to call it that, came from something even older which they don't know much about, but we can just talk about, I guess Hinduism as we know it. And so, Hinduism is based on this text called the Vedas, which are these sacred texts that were basically ... Would you call it? They're not written, but they're dictated or ...
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, dictated.
Stephan Downes:
Orally dictated.
Adam Rizvi:
Right.
Stephan Downes:
By wise beings called Richis, who were meditators who were in touch with cosmic knowledge, and they kind of passed it down orally for many, many, many, many, many generations to the point where priests in India, still their whole ... Well, a lot of their training. You know they're ritual specialists and they spend an inordinate amount of time memorizing the Vedas, um which are ... The Vedas is a body of text, I believe, are easily bigger than all other major religious texts combined. They're absolutely gigantic and there's a lot of them that still have even been translated into English, but I believe that the ... To summarize it, time is a cycle. Time is a circle. Time moves through, "Expansions and contractions of consciousness," which have correlates in terms of the types of lives that beings experiencing life in different forms, different realms of experience. So they're broken down, is it Kalpas? Adam? Or Yugas?
Adam Rizvi:
Yugas.
Stephan Downes:
Yugas, excuse me. So they're broken down into Yugas and Yugas are these very long periods of time, and each Yuga corresponds to you know, kind of an expansion or contraction of consciousness. And so, when you're in the dark Yugas it's, you know maybe, consciousness is contracting and becoming more and more gross in terms of you know more and more anger, more and more of these unconsidered emotions and actions. And then it reaches a darkest point and then it starts rising again, and then it reaches a highest point and it's infinite, right. I don't actually know, whether the Vedas have an actual ... Not the Vedas, but whether the world in Hinduism has a literal start or not. And I think when you get into Buddhism and this is ... I'm definitely going to get this one wrong, but it's worth doing. I don't really believe that the Buddha answered those kinds of questions, because he felt that those kinds of questions were immaterial. And then when you start to get into the understanding of karma, especially from a Buddhist perspective, although it would work from a Hindu perspective as well, you start getting into the idea of karma, is this emotion that's generated that it can't have a beginning, right? It can't have a true, real beginning because in itself, is a product of other karma. So, that's where I think we come from in Hinduism.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Was it, and you actually touched upon Buddhism too a little bit. What's interesting is in Hinduism and Buddhism, at least from your description, it's cyclical.
Stephan Downes:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it seems very linear.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
Adam Rizvi:
Which actually, I think juxtaposes nicely to the seemingly linear progression of the Big Bang universe expanding to a endless cold expanse, right?
Stephan Downes:
Yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
Now, where I go, when I hear these things is, I'm immediately aware of how I feel, right. Like I remember when I first heard that the data showed that the universe will continue to expand until it reaches this cold, vast expansive estate. I remember feeling let down and kind of bummed out about that whole thing, because I felt like there was this beautiful, poetic quality to the idea that the universe expanded and contracted again and expanded, which would have matched the cyclical nature that the Hindus described of the cosmos. Um but when I heard that, I thought something's going to show up that that's wrong. For some reason, I felt like that didn't hold the elegant simplicity that I was expecting it to hold. And yet, that's you know... science just is not about making things pretty. It just will tell you what the data show ideally, right, right.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
We can get into that too about whether or not science is actually achieving its job in being objective or the concept of objectivity...
Stephan Downes:
Spoiler alert, no.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, but is that interesting? Like, I don't know how it is for you when you hear about the cosmos being cyclical versus being part of a grand linear process that has a finite beginning and a potentially finite or infinite ending. What does that do to you psychologically? I'm curious.
Stephan Downes:
I almost ignore it.
Adam Rizvi:
Really.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, and I think the reason is that it is like ... I mean, I get what you're saying.
Adam Rizvi:
Are you going to pull a Buddha on us right now?
Stephan Downes:
Well, I'm trying not to. I know exactly where you're coming from. So I relate, I do relate to those kind of feelings. For me, I get that feeling, well ...
Adam Rizvi:
Well, I'll tell you why this is kind of a really important thing.
Stephan Downes:
Hold on. Shut up.
Adam Rizvi:
I'm glad you held back on using inappropriate language. Okay, yeah. Go ahead. Express yourself.
Stephan Downes:
I don't like... It's so far beyond my understanding, you know like the idea that, "Oh, the universe ends in however many billions of years," from the heat death or whatever you want to call it. Okay, you know it's the same thing of like ... What touches me more in terms of like, well you didn't really use the word awe, but the first time I saw the Andromeda Galaxy through binoculars and just understood that I can literally see the disc of a galaxy through binoculars, that blew my mind. You know, the scale of these things, the scale of a galaxy, the scale of a planetary system, the scale of the universe is what blows my mind, right? Like, that's what truly leaves me in awe of the universe we live in, is just its vastness, but that's not really ... I guess I never really dwell on the ending or beginning of it, because for me as I'll get into, I'm sure, that part of my life is very religious, so to speak. Not in that, it has an absolute answer because as far as an Indian religion, like Hinduism or Buddhism, doesn't have a status. It is a cycle and it's a cycle, whether someone says it is or not. You know, as far as science, it's kind of immaterial.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate you bringing it back to awe. It's interesting that that is very much what drives me. And I think the reason why this conversation is so meaningful to a lot of people, or I should say, why it causes many people to take a stance as if there's two arbitrary sides, is because of the emotion behind it, the feeling, right? When you offer what science says about the why and the where of cosmos, and then you offer what pick a religion says about the where and the why of the cosmos. Sometimes there's a greater feeling of meaning, there's purpose in one description over another and that really pulls on our heartstrings. Like, you know why a movie is so powerful? Because it stirs emotions. Versus a dry reading of you know the script, it just doesn't strike the heart. I think that's a really important. Emotion, I think, does play a role in this conversation because people can be happy and be completely illogical in their understanding of the cosmos, even on the verge of being superstitious, because it gives them meaning. It gives them purpose. It gives them emotion. It gives them a feeling of, yeah, I would say it's a feeling of purpose.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, yeah. That's fair. I would agree with that, absolutely, which it's not going to be this episode for sure. In a future episode, I'll start going on rants about science as the new religion and you know the hypocrisy of that.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
From those same people who condemn religion, but that's for another time.
Adam Rizvi:
Right, scientism.
Stephan Downes:
Oh, I like that, scientism. I never knew that. Okay, um do you feel like we have answered that question?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
Did you want to dive into another one?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
We got a lot here. We got a lot of questions on this cheat sheet. Cheat sheet, we were writing.
Adam Rizvi:
Let's do it. Let's dive deeper. So first of all, we're going to explore a whole bunch of ideas related to this. Hopefully we'll have some guests that'll tackle some very specific questions. The other thing I want to comment on here is that, there's something happening right now in the general... on a mass consciousness level. I think we are shifting. There is a... We're at a juncture where something new is happening and this is probably why I really liked this idea of having this conversation, because I feel like we're on a crux where we are starting to explore the possibility that these two concepts are arbitrary definitions. Science is exploring the realms of reality, where it is starting to realize that perception and consciousness and self-awareness and the self reflexive aspects to life, carries a lot of weight. Whereas before, it was very easy to set subjectivity aside.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
And to say, science is about objectivity. Now that we know it is impossible to be purely objective, now we start to bring our friend religion and spirituality, which really held those domains as unique to itself. And this is why I'm kind of excited because there's a huge potential now for us to dissolve the barrier between these two words.
Stephan Downes:
I like that. You know, I'm typically quite unsympathetic to like that notion. The way you're saying it, I really appreciate that. I really... Yeah, I like that. And you're going to be the expert on that one, because as a neurologist, you understand much more of the way consciousness works on a physical level and I will just listen to you at that point.
Adam Rizvi:
Let's tackle one of these questions.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah. So do you want to ... Let's see, what is the point? Is that a good one? We haven't really covered that.
Adam Rizvi:
Oh that's right. What's the ... So we said...
Stephan Downes:
What's the point? What's the point?
Adam Rizvi:
What's the point? Why?
Stephan Downes:
Yeah. Why?
Adam Rizvi:
Why?
Stephan Downes:
Why religion? Not just ... Well, I guess we didn't even start with your ... Okay. The second question is yours. [
Adam Rizvi:
Oh, I see what you're talking about.
Stephan Downes:
No, I confused myself. Sorry, everyone. So the second question you had. So we covered where we from.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
Now the second question was what?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, we kind of did, where are we going? Kind of, because we talked about...
Stephan Downes:
No. We didn't do where we're going at all. Well, we did the science of where you're going.
Adam Rizvi:
Oh, that's true. We did science.
Stephan Downes:
There's an unbelievably deep well of where religion thinks we're going.
Adam Rizvi:
Well, let's do that. Let's do that.
Stephan Downes:
Okay, cool. So everyone's science goes to the heat death of the universe. Heat death being, there's no more heat because everything is expanded so far, that there's no more kinetic energy to create heat.
Adam Rizvi:
There's no movement. It is cold, cold. When hell freezes over, right? No. All right, you can do an awkward silence on me now. All right. Get ready guys. This is going to be a long one. I'm probably going to lose. Okay, I give up, it was like four seconds. You realize that we're going to have to get our sound engineer, not to cut this out?
Stephan Downes:
Yep, like always.
Adam Rizvi:
Like always.
Stephan Downes:
All right.
Adam Rizvi:
We have a sound engineer that probably wonders what the hell we're doing, when we have these awkward pauses.
Stephan Downes:
Sorry, sorry dear engineer, who's forced to listen to this. Okay, so where is religion say we're going? Where is spirituality say we're going? There are so many answers to this, but I would like to ... I mean, I'm not as interested in like where X religion says we're going. I think they all generally have a destination, right? They all generally have a destination.
Adam Rizvi:
With really big differences though.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Which we...
Adam Rizvi:
That's what I thought you really want to go into.
Stephan Downes:
Well, we can go into those. So if you talk about Judeo-Christian, there's an apocalypse, right?
Adam Rizvi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Stephan Downes:
There's an end of the world, the physical world we live on and that at the end of the world, some people will go to everlasting peace and joy called heaven. And then other people will go to hell, everlasting torment and torture. Now that's the superficial reading of it right? So there's a lot of...
Adam Rizvi:
Judgment day.
Stephan Downes:
This is why I'm saying they all go to the same place, because like I wasn't even thinking about the superficial reasons, before I started talking about this. But then, there's the more esoteric versions of the Judeo-Christian religions would have to do with human consciousness, which is much more in line with Eastern religions. Do you want to talk about that?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, yeah. No, go ahead.
Stephan Downes:
I asked if you want to talk about it. Do you want me to talk about it?
Adam Rizvi:
I do, actually.
Stephan Downes:
I can't ... You want me? Okay, cool. Okay.
Adam Rizvi:
I like your sultry voice.
Stephan Downes:
Okay, thank you. I can go deeper. So, consciousness. So in terms of consciousness ... So, gosh, how do I even start talking about this? So there's this notion in esoteric schools of religion or spirituality in general, that consciousness has, "Frequencies," right, for lack of a better word. And it doesn't necessarily correlate to like the scientific measurement of frequency whatsoever. When we talk about like fine or gross frequencies, or high or low frequencies. So, like low frequency things are your base emotions you know, like I was saying before the un-analyzed emotions. So anger, jealousy, rage, like unquestioned sexual energy. Give me some more here.
Adam Rizvi:
I don't know, betrayal.
Stephan Downes:
Betrayal, yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
Fear.
Stephan Downes:
They all kind of come down to the same feel, that same visceral like negative feeling.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Anger, resentment, judgment.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, kind of all forms of anger.
Adam Rizvi:
And envy.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
Sloth. Now I'm starting to get into the seven sins.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, okay. We got it, all right. Yeah, we got it. All right, calm down. But then there's the higher frequency things, which are things like love, things like joy, when you're feeling them, there's a heightened sense to yourself. And so, one interpretation of the Judeo-Christian religions is that, heaven is a state of consciousness or heaven is a ... It has more to do with your internal state than it does a physical place you go. Same with hell, you know which correlates much more closely with Hinduism and Buddhism. Where it's more about an individual's karma and an individual's karma kind of determines where ones ends up. Although Buddhism is unique or Buddhism says that enlightenment is the absence eradication of karma. Whereas opposed to Hinduism is, better and better karma lets you be reborn into higher realms of, you can say of consciousness, right? Of consciousness.
Adam Rizvi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Stephan Downes:
It doesn't have to be a physical realm. I think a lot of... It's interpreted that way by many, many, many, many millions of people, but it doesn't have to be. There are also people who talk about it purely in terms of consciousness. That's where you go, right, is these heightened states of consciousness. So whether you want to call it enlightenment, awakening, nirvana. I'm sure there's some Judeo-Christian words that I don't know um for it. Gnosis I guess, true gnosis.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
You know, you end up there and I don't really know what, especially Judeo-Christian religions say about what happens then. I don't know. I think religions like Buddhism and Hinduism have more of those answers, but that's where you're going, right. You're going where you're state of consciousness leads, whether it's high or low, and they're like positive feedback mechanisms. So, if you raise your consciousness, you're more likely to raise it further. If you lower your consciousness, you're more likely to lower it further.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Actually now, this gets a little bit ... I think this gets at where currently we might start to draw out the divide between science and religion.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
Because science, hard materialistic science, as of right now, early 2000s, does not acknowledge this domain that you're talking of with frequencies of consciousness. Although in the New Age world, in the spiritual world, that is a given, right. People talk about subtle energies. They talk about consciousness, raising your frequency. Like there are these terms that are used quite often, and that holds a reality to many people, but in terms of hard materialistic science, that is completely unreal and there's no evidence for it. Now obviously, I don't agree with that perspective of materialistic science. I feel like there's plenty of evidence for it. It's just that that evidence has been ignored and oftentimes suppressed and I can give you books where people have done a far more thorough job than I can in these two seconds to explain it. But I think that where the divide between the two will start to merge, is exactly at this very specific point, which is the understanding of consciousness and perhaps even the qualification and the measurement of consciousness. Once science has fully embraced consciousness as an aspect of reality that merits study, and I would go so far as to say, understands that it forms the basis of reality, then we have something to really talk about.
Stephan Downes:
I agree, I agree. I don't think it'll, you know, you tell me here, but when I see these ... One of the limitations of science, which I know we're going to get into this later, but like science has to have something to measure and it has to have something to measure that's meaningful against other things. And so, one of the big limitations of science and it's not a bad limitation, it's just the way science works, is that if you don't know how to measure something, you can't say anything about it. Which is the point of science, right, is to measure things, to collect data and then to analyze the data and then to prove or disprove initial hypothesis, right. But if you don't have the measurement, if you don't know how to measure something, then you absolutely have nothing to say about it. You mentioned there's lots of evidence that has been ignored. I feel that we also don't have the measurements, right. One of the questions that I wanted to explore, and maybe you already have the answer to this, is how would science hypothetically design ... Is it possible for science to design an experiment to objectively tell the state of someone's consciousness? Not just self-reported right, but like other people agree. Let's say you get a community of people, a community of spiritual practitioners and they say, "This person is at this state of consciousness," right? Like can you design an experiment, that confirms or denies that, right and not even denies that confirms it. I think it would absolutely deny it, right out of the good bat.
Adam Rizvi:
Right.
Stephan Downes:
But, can you confirm it, right? So that kind of thought experiment really leads. That's what I used to tend to think about the limitations of science. But that's very different from where you just mentioned, which is the larger scientific community has in a lot of ways suppressed certain information.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, and that's a long conversation that we can get into. There is millions of branch points that we have to explore.
Stephan Downes:
I know, I know.
Adam Rizvi:
But I want to actually comment on your statement regarding measurement being a bedrock, a core aspect of what makes science, science. There's this great story or analogy that I like to bring up. It's this idea of, there's two men in a dark street, right. And there's a street lamp that's on, but everything else is dark. And one of the men is on his knees and um clearly looking like he's searching for something and he's right underneath the lamp. And then this other man walks up to him and wonders, "What is he doing?" And he goes and he asks him, "Are you looking for something?" And he's like, "Yeah, yeah I lost my keys. They've got to be here somewhere." And he's like, "Well, they're clearly not where you're looking. I don't see anything. Maybe it's over there. Why don't you check down there." He's like, "Oh, it's too dark down there." And he's like, "Yeah, but that could be where your keys are." He's like, "Well, the light is over here. So I'm just going to look here." Now. That's a very interesting analogy and I like this story because you will only see what you can measure. And this man who's hunting for his keys, he won't even bother looking in the dark, because he has no way of seeing in the dark, or so he believes.
Stephan Downes:
Right.
Adam Rizvi:
And I think science in many ways is similar to the man who refuses to look outside of where the light is falling on the street, because it doesn't have the tools to measure. So it'll stay measuring in a very small circumscribed area, because that's the only thing that science has tools, gives it access to.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, yeah. When we start to get into that, this is why I don't see a conflict between the two, because there are people who understand that limitation, but yet they will say, like one of my least favorite truisms about science is when someone says, "There has to be a scientific explanation for that." It's like, well of course there is because that's what science does. It describes things. Whether the thing happens, if it happens at all, there's a scientific explanation for it. You know, that's it. That's it. And you might say, "Oh, I saw a UFO." And then science might come around and say, "Oh no, it was swamp gas. That's the scientific explanation." But there is a scientific explanation, right? Like it's by default, true. If it's explained, it can be explained ... So anyway.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
So you have this like... These inherent limitations of it, which aren't bad. They're just the limitations of science, but you have people who base their entire like meaning of their lives, which gets into the third of the why, the third question on this hypothetical notion that science is the savior of all knowledge and will eventually solve all of our problems forever. And if people just stopped being into religion, that the world would be a much better place. And I think there's good parts of that argument and there's an amazing amount of hubris and hypocrisy to that argument.
Adam Rizvi:
This is a great segue to something I was hoping to bring up, which is the...
Stephan Downes:
Is it the third question, about the meaning?
Adam Rizvi:
Not quite.
Stephan Downes:
Before we end today, I want to get to that because we set out to do that, but go ahead, go ahead.
Adam Rizvi:
Okay. Okay. No, no.
Stephan Downes:
Let's go down. Let's go down the road you're going. No, no, no.
Adam Rizvi:
Okay. I can summarize what I'm going to say relatively quickly.
Stephan Downes:
Okay.
Adam Rizvi:
So there's this philosopher named Thomas Kuhn. He wrote a very famous book called The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions. And the history behind that book was actually ... I'm trying to remember now. He was in college, he was in Harvard and he was asked to teach. I'm going to butcher this. He was asked to teach non-science students about early scientific exploration, in particular Aristotle. And he said, "Okay, I'll do it. I'll teach them." He actually went back and he read Aristotle's physics. And he was struck by how poorly written it was, what a terrible observer Aristotle was and how the logic behind his observations and his interpretations of what he was seeing was not at all consistent. He's like, "This guy was a terrible scientist" you know. Then he had an aha moment. He's like, "Oh, but I'm comparing Aristotle to Isaac Newton. I'm comparing Aristotle to how science sees the world now and judging him as such." And then, he realized he needed to go and see the world from Aristotle's point of view and realized Aristotle was actually seeing the world through a very particular paradigm, a particular perspective. And that that paradigm actually underwent many upheavals and he has a whole thing about how he actually up-ended the idea that science is... progresses linearly, that science accumulates knowledge, and then refines its theories about the universe. Instead of what he proposed is that science goes through massive leaps and changes that eventually you live under a particular theory or a model, framework of reality, and then anomalies start to crop up. And then they get too numerous to ignore until someone propose a revolutionary new framework that then gets ridiculed and pushed away until there's enough credibility by other people who support that revolutionary framework, that it becomes adopted as the new status quo. And then you continue to grow and do experiments with that new framework. And so, he... the takeaway from that book among other things is you can never judge a particular perspective unless you understand the worldview that it exists inside of. And also, the concept that evolution of scientific thought occurs in leaps and bounds, not linearly. And this is why I think, we're talking about science as this monolithic thing that we juxtapose religion with, but science is a moving target that undergoes its own massive shifts. So I propose that this process that Thomas Kuhn is talking about, these scientific revolutions will continue to happen and we will ... I fully believe we are undergoing one such revolution in science where this idea of consciousness being a substrate of reality will be taken for granted. It will be like, "Yeah, of course. Of course, it is." Although it's not the case now. That is where we're headed.
Stephan Downes:
Mhm. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that's an exceptionally great point to bring in. Yeah, and it's true and if you spend enough time around science and scientific literature and funding and stuff like that, it's even easy to see in the just a very gross world, what things get funding, how funding works, who's respected who isn't, now versus then you know. It's not, like you're saying, it's not objective whatsoever. And so, because of the subjectivity you know, the paradigms exist and paradigms change and you know Thomas Kuhn very accurately described how they change so.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. So tell me about the why with ...
Stephan Downes:
Tell me about the why.
Adam Rizvi:
We're at a solid hour now.
Stephan Downes:
This is a question. I have to say ... Well, I guess I can answer the scientific question so that the scientific version of that is that, there is no why. That questions is one of those things that's, you know according to science, humanity, human consciousness is a fluke and there are many more flukes like it you know, in the scale and scope and timeline of the universe, but it's a fluke. You know, it comes down to the notion of evolution and selective adaptation and the way that evolution works, where it's not directed other than, as a response to what's already there. You know, so. I don't know if we can get into evolutionary theory, we don't have to, but there's no meaning whatsoever. It's like you were saying, it's a cold, harsh world and we just happen to be aware of it, you know in a way that other creatures aren't. And that, the solar system, the galaxy, all of that motion, all of that time, the billions of years have resulted in you and I having a conversation about it right now, but it has no meaning whatsoever. That's what I'd say science says. Now, I mean like hard science, I don't mean like ...
Adam Rizvi:
Sure.
Stephan Downes:
Philosophy, right? I don't go there.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah but physical sciences. And so what about religion then?
Stephan Downes:
Well, I think Judeo-Christianity has always to me, had a very directed why, right? Well, I can speak to Christianity and I'll speak to Christianity poorly, I might add, you know, is that, we were put here. We were created by God to be stewards of earth until we die and go to heaven or hell. I don't...
Adam Rizvi:
I thought it was to be fruitful and multiply.
Stephan Downes:
Is it the reason we're here, to be fruitful and multiply? I don't know. I mean, even within fundamentalist religion, there's probably vast disagreements about this.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. That's actually very interesting in and of itself.
Stephan Downes:
Well sure, yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
For someone who, let's just say, assuming that you've broken past a life where you're living paycheck to paycheck, and you're worried about where your next meal is going to come from, and whether you have a roof over your head, right? Obviously, if those are the concerns, then you're probably not even listening to this podcast. So life, these kinds of questions are irrelevant. Once those issues get addressed, then people have the time to ask themselves, "Why is any of this happening?" Right? And because the answer doesn't come readily in religion, and you rightly pointed out, I think, hard materialistic science doesn't really offer a why. It says, "Why are you even asking the question?" Right, like.
Stephan Downes:
Right.
Adam Rizvi:
Throw the question out, but religion will come in and it offers different things. So you're saying Judaeo-Christian traditions offer multiple reasons.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, but they're usually linear, like you're saying, like you pointed out recently. They're linear, whereas when I think of Buddhism is to a why, I think that there are probably a lot of Buddhists who would say, "We're Bodhisattvas, that we're here to become enlightened ourselves or to help humanity become enlightened." You know, things like that. But to me, that answer has always existed inside of the idea of these Yugas, right. These ideas of these cycles, although I guess Buddhism kind of exits those in its own way and so. I've never been as connected to the why. For me, this question has always been about my personal choice and it's because I didn't really feel like I had another option just because I felt so compelled to go down that path, because it was powerful for me, right but it's doesn't ... I think when I get into the why of a grand why for some sort of religious reason, it starts to get into like, "Because this way is clearly, obviously the best way for everybody right now," which I don't agree with, you know? I think that I differ than a lot of religious people, because I don't agree with that. I'm perfectly fine if someone doesn't want anything to do with religion. It doesn't affect me. My relationship to my own consciousness or whatever you want to call it, is completely independent from how other people view it.
Adam Rizvi:
Right. Although your own personal why, I suspect, drives you.
Stephan Downes:
Right, but we're not talking about ... Well, I guess we can talk about personal whys, but I was having this conversation from like, what is religion's why. I'm just admitting I'm not great at answering that question because even if a religion has a why, I'd probably disagree with it.
Adam Rizvi:
I see. Yeah. Well, let me give voice to a couple of a whys...
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, go for it.
Adam Rizvi:
Just for thoroughness sake.
Stephan Downes:
Someone has to know what they're talking about here.
Adam Rizvi:
Well, I think back to when I was a lot younger and I would go to the Mosque quite often, and I would say there are a lot of devout Muslims out there and you know, Catholics Christians too, in at least in my experience of going to church, where their why is to love God, love of God, right, to worship God, right. And the worship could mean many different things, but I know many devout people of both of those traditions that ... And I've had several Jewish friends who will say the same thing you know, love of God. And I think that's a powerful reason. It drives a lot of people and it brings them to a place of great peace and it drives them to love their brothers and sisters and their fellow human beings. And then there's another, there's a deeper why and this comes from my experience with Sufi mystics and Christian mystics, which they would say is to remember their oneness with God, to realize that they are one with God. And that I think starts to be a little bit more consistent with Eastern tradition, which is not theistic per se, but that sense of going from a dualistic experience of life to a non-dualistic experience of life, there's a relationship there, or there's a similarity there.
Stephan Downes:
Hm. Mhm. Yeah, absolutely there is. Absolutely there is. Yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
Do you think we did that justice?
Stephan Downes:
I'm just stuck on this why thing, because I feel like we gave an answer, but it's an ... Science is very clear, because science is like, "There is no why." Right? The question doesn't jive with science. This is not the way it works. There's no purpose, but when you start getting into the religion, it's just, there's so many different why's. They usually have to do with improving human potential in some way, whether it be consciousness like a literal you're going to heaven, or you're going to be reborn in the ... Even in Buddhism, there's so many different whys, right? There are people who are Buddhist and they think the why of life is to accumulate merit to have better karma. So that the next life they are born a monk, right.
Adam Rizvi:
Mm-hmm.
Stephan Downes:
So that they can have ... There are people who ... You know? This is the one. I was recently, not too long ago, at a little presentation about these Buddhist nuns in a place that, I think it's Nepal. I think it might not be. It might not be Nepal. It might be China. But you know this place where they were, they're taking on these leadership positions in these monastic communities, all of these ... There's a lot of Western people were at this conference and it was kind of being touted by ... It was one of those great moments in academia where something just falls flat on its face and it's really, really cosmically funny. So you had all these Western academics who were very much like, "Oh, this is about women's empowerment. This is about these women are you know coming into power," and it's very like Western narrative. And then they had someone there who was from the region and knew these women very well and the culture they were in. And she was like, "That's not it at all. They're doing it because their teachers ask them to. That's it." It was the most disappointing answer to someone searching for this grand like narrative. I mean, whatever that narrative happened to be, it happened to be this particular one, but that is more my style, right? I don't buy into the grand why.
Adam Rizvi:
I see. Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
You know, you're like, why is this individual doing this thing? That motivation is as varied as there are individuals, which is ... You know, if religion's about this self-actualization, if we're going to go, not even ... I mean, we can stop talking about the, I guess the fundamentalist religions, if we start talking about the more esoteric versions of religion, I think that why is completely personal to every single practitioner. And I think maybe the scripture says there's a why, but like do I think that that lines up with all the individual practitioners? Absolutely not.
Adam Rizvi:
Right.
Stephan Downes:
You know, I think even if you look at Buddhism, right? So there's the idea of a Bodhisatva, someone who is here to ease the suffering and awaken others. Like that's their purpose in life, you know? But even among that, you have people who are deep down very much doing it for their own benefit, right. Because they think they're doing the right thing right, which has nothing to do with ... That's a moral reason, it's not a ... but it's arbitrary. They're doing this thing for other people, but it's really for themselves, right. It's not really for other people. So, you get into why, and it's just super complicated and super individual. And it's a bit of a disappointing answer, but I don't really think there is a collective why.
Adam Rizvi:
That's generally the case with you, Stephan. Disappointment.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, you know it baby.
Adam Rizvi:
Man. Well, that's a good way to end, which is that there's the wiser individual and that might be a nice little invitation.
Stephan Downes:
It changes. And it changes too. The why changes.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. That's a good point actually. Well, here's my personal question to anyone listening to this, even to you Stephan. What is your personal why, at this moment? And how did that come to be?
Stephan Downes:
I think we talked about this. You and I talked about this on a previous episode.
Adam Rizvi:
We might've, we might've. And then-
Stephan Downes:
We can talk about it again. That's okay.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Well, we're definitely way past our usual hour, but I think this kind of conversation is a ... This topic is a huge, massive topic, but I think we did a relatively good job at laying the groundwork. We've sort of defined the landscape, so to speak. Now it's about exploring the hills and the valleys.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, I hope we did. And so I want to give a little taste, right before we go, of what are some of the other questions we want to ask next time. And I also want to say, if you're listening to this, because this is a series, if you have a question, let us know. We want to answer it. We want to talk about it. If you're listening to this and you have a question that you want us to talk about, please let us know.
Stephan Downes:
What is our email? Is it letterstothesky [crosstalk 01:05:21].
Adam Rizvi:
Letterstotheskypodcast@gmail.com.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, letterstotheskypodcast@gmail.com. That's a great way to get in touch with us and let us know what your question is or your thoughts. Turn our email box into a YouTube comment section, please. Okay, but going forward, I want to talk about... What are some of the things we want to cover?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, why don't you read off some of the questions that we'll tackle.
Stephan Downes:
Okay, okay. Here we go. So I wanted to talk about the limits of each, which we've started to cover a bit of, but I wanted to actually like go into that, in terms of what are the types of questions that each science and religion can and can't answer, or claims to answer. I want to talk about, is religion dependent on science to be true? And I think this is a big one for me because of how cut up. Not cut up. Cut up is the wrong word. That's too strong of a word, but of how many people turn religion into social, like social movements.
Adam Rizvi:
Oh yeah.
Stephan Downes:
Anyway, I can go on talking about that. We'd already talked about you couldn't experiment created to objectively test the purported results of religion in science or religion to some. For sure, we can talk about that, a bit of critique there. Let's see. You have our religion and science stagnant answers to perennial questions or do they evolve? Does their evolution influence each other? Which I think we started talking about, which opened up the question, but I think there's a lot more to do there. And then one of the notes I had. So there's a book coming out from Shambala Publications called Secularizing Buddhism, which is an anthology of little essays from different people with wildly different backgrounds and topics, the secularization of Buddhism. And I think for me, this is a really, I'll say, it's a pressing matter so to speak in the evolution of American Buddhism, and so I'm more familiar with it, but I think it's a really great way to talk about this conversation in real time, right, in a real practical situation. So, I knew this conversation was going to be bigger than just a book, a single book. Like it's way too massive, but I want to talk about that book as a part of this conversation. We're going to have other topics as well, because we're going to try and find some guests that have specific areas of knowledge, and we're going to totally pick their brains and get some deep answers.
Adam Rizvi:
Awesome. All right, my friend. I will see you whenever I next see you.
Stephan Downes:
Sounds good, my friend. All right, take care.
Adam Rizvi:
All right, see ya.