VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1 SPRING 2015

dreds of Christian churches alone in spite of appealing to a single book – the Bible. Each church expounds it in a different way and wants us to believe that such is the will of God. This number would be considerably lower if revelations were confronted with reason and reality, and genuine revelations were discerned from delusion and fiction. Regrettably, theologians avoid the requirement of integrality or they apply it too laxly and dishonestly. They invented a view of science and religion as two skewed lines, bypassing one another with no intersection whatsoever. According to this thesis, only this world can be perceived and subjected to critical thinking – the other (spiritual) world should be only a subject of blind belief. But is it a different world altogether? Or is there only one world with an inner, spiritual dimension? Are those two worlds isolated causally and wholly unrelated? If yes, it suits the powers that be. The church then does not need to resolve any conflict with science; no observation and no reasoning can disturb the dogma and the authorities can infallibly determine anything. Such a faith, which is completely out of touch with reality, is trouble free; but it is also worthless for the same reason. Disconnected from life, it becomes abstract, barren and stagnant. After all, it does not matter what is believed in because it has no consequences. Abandoning the requirement of integrality opens the way to ambiguity, fragmentation and arbitrariness. Philosophers who stopped concerning themselves about the moral imperatives of the spirit, as well as the special results of the sciences, are fabricating brilliantly constructed castles in the air. But they have lost the ability to discern the valuable from the rubbish and have become stuck in relativism. Anything shocking or affecting the emotions began to be regarded as art, even though it has no moral or truth value. Art, too, has to be truthful – it should convey the subtle, yet significant truths of life and educate morally, otherwise it is useless. Art must involve something generally valid – instead of being a mere diagnosis of the mental state of its author. To this purpose, the artist must take an interest in knowledge on the one hand and enter the service of higher ideals on the other, not indulge in the personal sphere of feelings only. Integration of the sciences, arts and religion leads to their purification and enhancement. Disintegration leads to the decadence of all three. Disjoined, each of them acquires hidden degrees of freedom that are not filled with anything random, but become a purposeful field of activity covered by demons (concealed evil tendencies). Scientific knowledge, supposedly value neutral, is massively distorted on behalf of private profit. Artistic creativity serves to incite the lower passions. And religious preaching, which supposedly does not care about this world, only the next one, accommodates all the more flexible political expectations. Knowledge and also free, independent and responsible individuality with it, come into being only through integration of the three mental components. Only integral knowledge gives man the inner certainty of autonomous judgment. We can stand firm only in such a thing as this, which is objectively examined and subjectively experi48 (12) Emil Páleš

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