To reconcile such species-threatening worldviews, we need a broader canvas on which to project a bigger picture of the tangible evidence that undergirds them. It must have room to encompass evidence ignored by all participating groups: religious devotees, laboratory scientists, spiritual gurus, atheists, humanists, secular skeptics, and others.
It is imperative that we distinguish consensual identification of facts from assumptions. The global storehouse of unexamined historical evidence keeps expanding the human story. Everyday, new discoveries undermine long-held scientific and religious beliefs. They demonstrate that our conventional human story is too often based on blind faith.
Given my own early theological background, over the years I have tried to engage scholars steeped in the notion of divine realms to consider alternative approaches to evaluating their sacred texts. Almost all find it impossible to look at others sacred texts with the same set of historical lens they use in their other historical research.
Some of these theologians want to reform the behavior of some of their co-believers, but they cannot bring themselves to re-examine assumptions that underlie their actions. This bifocal (faith or test) way of perceiving aspects of our reality lies in our worldviews.
In a parallel vein, secular scholars look at the same religious texts as lacking historical value because they believe that the texts deal with supernatural matters instead of real history. The result is that both religious and secular scholars have chosen to propagate their respective models of history that omit vast areas of relevant historical evidence.
I recently made a presentation along these lines at a small academic history meeting. Its advertised aspiration was a bigger picture of human history. Group discussion of my paper on anomalous evidence relevant to their presumptive story stirred personal fears.
The group leaders amygdala-based, defensive reaction demonstrated the same type of emotionally-grounded worldviews as those of the religious groups mentioned above. Regardless of educational, social, or economic level, our subconscious knows when we have unprovable assumptions underpinning our public persona. The fear of being wrong leads to all sorts of defensive, inappropriate, and destructive personal and social acts.
My next effort this year to understand how our worldviews divide us and how we might bridge these gaps will be as a participant in the Paradigm Symposium in Minneapolis in October (from 18 to 21). This conference will focus on evidence that challenges some of the more narrow history highlighted in the above described meeting.
Given the presenters at the Paradigm Symposium, it should be more open to integrating material presented from opposing worldviews. What is needed in any future, historically oriented conferences are exchanges among both academic and independent scholars.
A tenet of my alma mater Harvard Kennedy School is that leaders "... are expected not only to master specific subjects and apply that learning in other areas, but also to know when to apply [it] to open-ended questions that have no single right answer."*
We need a New Sense of the World Order before we can have a New World Order!
*Harvard Kennedy School Magazine. Summer 2012. p. 27.
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