Some of you may already know, or have guessed
from previous posts, that I am a bit of a science enthusiast and I am also
a (religious) believer. And that's why, several
years ago I started to think about the twin themes of
Reason and Revelation; "the world of reason or
the world of revelation - the world of the philosopher or the world of the
mystic".
That’s a phrase I coined to help me understand our faiths and beliefs,
where belief can lead to
conflict but also where a lack of faith can
leave us without foundations.
In the West, the conditions that
allowed the scientific/social enlightenment of the 18thC started to develop
ideas which claimed that an expansion of our knowledge would bring about a
rational understanding of our old superstitions and beliefs. That God Himself
would be explained away in the reasoning that followed.
And interestingly enough, the
conflict between science and religion/faith is a conversation that has been popping
up again and again for me over the last wee while. My neice Esther (O'Connor,
singer/songwriter with Ashton Lane) recently introduced me to a sermon on line
called "The Imaginary Divide". Of the many points that were made, one
thing that did stay with me is that faith, not specifically the religious kind,
can take us beyond reason and doesn't have to contradict it.
It was the French writer and
philosopher Voltaire who said "Faith consists of believing when it is beyond the powers of reason to believe".
A theoretical scientist for example, has to
imagine a place where they have never
been before. It is so true of science that many of the greatest discoveries
were, and continue to be made possible by an audacity of imagination: a leap of
faith. I think therefore we can question the wisdom of an exclusively
reasoned and rational world- or universal-view, by saying that intuition and
faith are as essential as logic and reason. Perhaps Einstein was fairly close
to the mark when he said "religion without science is lame, science
without religion is blind".
Now, most of us accept that there is a balance
to be found between science and religion. They are different ways of expressing
different perspectives of the same universe and our place within it. "What
is a scientist after all?" said Jacques Yves Cousteau. "It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going
on." If that's the case then what is religion? I'd say it is when a curious
man is looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of experience, trying to
know what's going on.
And that leads me back to
what the wonderful Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said in a BBC program here in the UK a
few years ago. He said "Science takes things apart to see how they work,
religion puts things together to see what they mean". Dead on!
A bit about the new works...
"Like his earlier
mezzotints and etchings, Duffin's newer work reflects his inner journey through
philosophical and scientific matters...through form, symbol, colour and
texture...the iconographic vocabulary of gargoyles, angels, doves, guns and
bombs being intuitive to the Western viewer."
"Though pondering
matters of war, hatred and disruption Duffin reiterates a phrase often
integrated in his work: "Peace starts with a smile" reminding us that
the most powerful weapon we hold as individuals is a smile. It seems however,
that the power which Duffin himself holds as an artist is to raise the
difficult subjects which permeate contemporary society and reflect them back to
the viewer in a thought-inspiring way. What he seeks across cultural and
religious divides is the humanity that connects us..."
Isabelle Thul, ArtMag UK.
Isabelle Thul, ArtMag UK.
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