The Existential Choice Between Science and Religion

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The choice is not between science and religion, as some would like to assert. Many intelligent people assent to the existence of a mind like intelligence within the fabric of the cosmos without subscribing to any formal religious belief or practice. Einstein made it clear he was neither an atheist nor a believer in any formal religion like the stoics. He asserted that individuals could rise to a third stage of religious experience, which he called cosmic religion.

What defined a Stoic above all else was the choice of a life in which every thought, every desire, and every action would be guided by no other law than that of universal Reason. ~ Pierre Hadot[i] The Stoics placed a rational, divine, and providentially ordered cosmos at the center of their philosophical system and relied on it to guide their every thought, desire, and action. For the Stoic, Nature is the measure of all things. Therefore, the Stoics argued to experience well-being (eudaimonia), we must live in agreement with Nature. [i] Hadot, P., & Chase, M. (1998). The Inner Citadel: The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 308 FULL TRANSCRIPT COMING SOON