In my 30's on a business trip to the University of Michigan, I suddenly and unexpectedly met a childhood friend that I hadn't seen for 25 years. As a teacher of religion, he asked me how science could explain things that he took on faith such as Jesus changing water to wine, healing the blind, raising the dead, and walking on water. I said that we couldn't, and that most scientists assume that these are just parables. However, the answer didn't feel satisfactory to me, and I created the intention to seek a bridge between science and religion.

With this intention, many "white crows" began to appear in my life that expanded the boundaries of my perception. William James said: "if you wish to upset the law that all crows are black -- it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white." A series of personal experiences gradually convinced me that there exist aspects of reality beyond what have been typically incorporated into scientific modeling. Although I discovered extensive research data on phenomena outside of the current scientific models, the key influences that altered my beliefs were personal experiences that made me query the foundation of the existing laws of physics, explore the concepts of space and time, and investigate ideas like the soul.

Experience, I believe, represents the foundation for everything we know. Clarence says that "science is based on experimentation." This statement is true. Experiments are the "experiences" of scientists. The root of the words experience and experiment are identical. However, turning experiments into science is an inherently imprecise process. All of scientific experiments depend upon measurements. Measurements provide the data that creates the bedrock that science rests upon. However, all measurements are tentative since they always have a degree of error in them -- a plus or minus. This is due to the inherent limitations of all scientific instruments.

Next, Clarence makes a statement to which I object. He claims that science is based upon proof and that without proof something is just a "fantasy." This represents a misunderstanding of science. Proof doesn't apply in any way to the data that is at the foundation of science. Proof can only exist in mathematics and logic. In science we have data and models but no proof! Skeptics and critics of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) often mistakenly use the argument that there in no "absolute proof." They forget that science is the interplay between data and models. Models/theories are always tentative. In fact, science rests upon a belief system that every model/theory will be superseded. Thus, in effect, every model could be considered a "fantasy." Models or theories proposing the existence of the soul work in the same manner.

A common belief is that reproducible results represent a proof, and a prerequisite for real science. Reproducibility is not a law of nature, nor of science. It is a desirable tenet in science, easiest to achieve in the inanimate material world, but becoming much more difficult as the complexity of the system under study increases -- like in the earth and weather sciences. The belief that consistent reproducibility represents proof arises because of an assumption that space-time forms a closed system. Non-locality shows that it is not closed! This is why science uses statistical distributions as a way to approximate reproducibility.