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Two Eyes, One Reality: Toward Fuller Knowing

The Case for Including Religious Experience

Tripp Fuller and Homebrewed Team

Apr 15, 2026

The Day I Discovered I’d Been Half-Blind

In seventh grade I was in the car with my family and everyone started laughing at the license plate of the car in front of us. When I asked what was so funny, my Dad said look at his plate. I remember being shocked that they could read it. I saw the car, but I had no idea they could actually read the plate of a car in motion. This discovery sent me to the optometrist and the world changed. I’d adapted so well to my astigmatism I didn’t realize how much I was missing. When the optometrist placed those corrective lenses in front of my eyes, I actually gasped. On the ride home with new glasses I was in awe that the leaves on trees weren’t just green blobs—they were individual miracles of engineering. People’s faces had expressions I’d been missing for years.

“So THIS is what everyone else has been seeing?” I asked my Mom.

“Well,” she smiled, “this is what you could have been seeing all along.”

Driving home with my new glasses, I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things in my daily life that would be different with a new vision.

This reminds me of a conversation I’d witnessed during my PhD program between Philip Clayton and Dan Dennett. Both are brilliant and respected philosophers and in conversation something became clear to me I hadn’t anticipated. Dennett had just finished attacking religious belief with all the confidence of someone who’d never examined their own assumptions. Philip didn’t argue back. Instead, he asked: “Can your worldview explain why you care so much about being right?”

Dennett said, “Because truth matters.”

“Exactly,” Philip smiled. “But where in your purely physical universe does ‘mattering’ exist? You’ve just revealed something your philosophy can’t explain—the very passion that drives your science fuel philosophy.”

What if we’re all philosophically half-blind, missing crucial data about reality because our worldview lenses filter it out?

Two Conversations, One Coffee Shop

Let me tell you about two conversations that happened in the same Edinburgh coffee shop, one week apart, that showed me how both religious and secular worldviews can suffer from the same partial blindness.

First was with Anthony, an old friend from my days at a Baptist University. For ninety minutes, he quoted verses, defended doctrines, and explained why his particular interpretation of substitutionary atonement was the only way to understand the cross.

“But Anthony,” I finally asked, “when was the last time your theology made you more loving?”

He paused, then pivoted to more arguments. He had all the words but had lost the music. He could explain his beliefs about God but couldn’t explain why holding his newborn daughter made him weep with joy.

The next week, at the same shop, I sat with Maggie, a brilliant evolutionary biologist. As we talked about her research on ant colonies, she mentioned her teenage daughter’s struggle with depression.

“Emma keeps asking ‘what’s the point?’” Maggies admitted. “I can explain the neurochemistry of depression, I can describe evolutionary advantages of consciousness, but I can’t explain why her life matters. I know it does—God, I know it does—but my worldview doesn’t have a place for that knowing.”

She could explain the mechanics but not the meaning, so she asked her colleague in Science and Religion about it.

The Coherence Test

Here’s why I fell in love with philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and William James: The best test of any worldview isn’t whether it’s religious or secular, but whether it’s coherent. Can it hold together everything we know to be true about human experience without contradicting itself?

Philosophy, Whitehead argued, must weave every element of our experience into its scheme. A philosopher who ignores an entire category of human experience is like a scientist who refuses to look through telescopes because “real” data only comes from the naked eye. They’re simply bad at their job.

David Ray Griffin, inspired by Whitehead puts it bluntly: Any worldview that can’t explain these obvious features of existence has failed:

How you know time exists (you can’t see, touch, taste, smell, or hear it)
Why mathematical truths feel discovered rather than invented
Where moral urgency comes from—that gut feeling that some things are just wrong
Why beauty stops you in your tracks
What makes consciousness more than just brain chemistry

Griffin calls the dominant secular worldview “naturalism SAM”—a naturalism that’s sensationist (only trusting the five senses), atheistic, and materialistic. It sounds sophisticated until you realize that even science depends on things we can’t perceive with our five senses. You can’t see causation—you see one billiard ball move, then another moves, but the actual causal connection? That’s known through what Whitehead called a deeper, nonsensory perception.

The Emergence Revolution

This is where Philip Clayton’s work on emergence becomes revolutionary. Your mind is obviously dependent on your brain—damage the brain, and consciousness changes. But consciousness isn’t reducible to brain states. When you choose to help a stranger, solve a mathematical problem, or fall in love, these mental states have genuine causal power. Ideas literally reshape reality through human action.

Clayton calls this the “more than physical” nature of reality. Not supernatural—beyond nature—but natural systems giving rise to genuinely new properties. Water is more than hydrogen and oxygen. Life is more than chemistry. Mind is more than neurons. And perhaps spirit is more than mind.

Once you admit that consciousness and values have emerged as genuine causal realities, you’ve created what Clayton calls a “minimal opening” for theological interpretation. You don’t have to believe in miracles. You don’t have to abandon the scientific method. You just have to acknowledge what’s obvious—that reality has produced layers of emergence, each with its own genuine properties.

Two Windows into One Reality

So here’s one of Whitehead’s revolutionary proposals we’ve been discussing in our current reading group: What if we have two essential ways of knowing, and we need both for depth perception in reality?

The External Story (Science’s Gift)

The scientific method is a kind of spiritual discipline—the humility to let go of what you want to be true in favor of what evidence shows. When I studied climate science deeply, it deepened my faith rather than challenging it. Here was creation itself telling its story through ice cores and tree rings.

But even scientists rely on more than their five senses. As Griffin pointed out, the basic concepts of science—time, space, causation, the reliability of logic—none of these can be proven by sensory data alone. They’re known through deeper perception that comes before conscious thought.

The Internal Story (Religion’s Gift)

Religious knowing isn’t about believing without evidence. It’s about a different kind of empiricism—the empiricism of participation rather than observation.

On December 4th of 2007 I held Elgin, my oldest son for the first time. I experienced something that can only be called knowledge. Not belief, not feeling—knowledge. I knew that this child’s existence mattered in some ultimate way, that love isn’t just a chemical reaction but a fundamental force.

Here’s Whitehead’s insight: What if we’re swimming in the sacred all the time, like fish in water, only occasionally becoming aware of it? The mystic isn’t special—they’re just momentarily conscious of what’s always there.

God Without Magic, Nature Without Mechanism

This challenges both fundamentalists and atheists. My fundamentalist friends insist God must interrupt nature with miracles. My atheist friends insist nature is a closed system. What if they’re both wrong?

What if God works through nature rather than against it? Not through coercive power—forcing outcomes—but through what Whitehead called persuasive power—luring, attracting, inspiring? The most powerful force in the universe might not be the strong nuclear force but the gentle pull of beauty, truth, and goodness.

This actually helps with the problem of evil. If God works through persuasion rather than coercion, suffering isn’t God’s fault or mysterious plan—it’s the inevitable risk of a universe with genuine freedom and creativity.

Critical Faith: The Adventure of Holy Uncertainty

Now let me challenge my religious friends. The problem with fundamentalism isn’t that it takes religion seriously—it’s that it doesn’t take it seriously enough. By retreating into unquestionable dogmas, it betrays the adventurous spirit of authentic faith.

Clayton advocates for “critical faith”—faith that embraces doubt as companion rather than enemy. What if we treated religious claims like scientists treat hypotheses? Not as unquestionable truths, but as proposals to test against experience?

For instance:

Hypothesis: Living with gratitude increases flourishing
Test: Practice gratitude and observe
Evidence: Both personal experience and research confirm this

This isn’t reducing faith to science—it’s taking faith seriously enough to engage it with full intelligence.

The Great-Grandchildren Test

Rabbi Brad Artson once told me how he answers when congregants ask how to think about pressing and controversial issues: “Think through them in a way that your great-grandchildren will have a better life.”

That’s what Whitehead called the “quality of qualities”—the ability to sense that some things matter more than others. Both militant atheism and religious fundamentalism fail this test. The atheist who can’t explain why their great-grandchildren’s lives ultimately matter, the fundamentalist so focused on afterlife that they ignore the climate their great-grandchildren will inherit—both philosophies are half-blind.

Stories of Integration

Let me tell you about two transformations that illustrate everything I’m trying to say.

David was a neuroscientist who insisted consciousness was just brain states. Then his daughter was born with severe disabilities. Holding her, knowing she might never speak or walk, he experienced something his materialism couldn’t explain: absolute conviction of her infinite worth.

“I could explain her neurons but not her worth,” he told me. “I could describe her limitations but not her light.” He didn’t become traditionally religious, but he could no longer pretend reality was only physical.

Three years ago, I joined an interdisciplinary conference on climate change. We had Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, and agnostics. During a dinner conversation something of a new vision emerged. Tom, an atheist engineer, was led on a solar panel initiative with the passion of a cathedral builder. Sister Maria described a community garden project her Sisters were expanding across her diocese and how they trained parishes in the most sustainable practices. We weren’t compromising our different views—we were combining our different ways of seeing. Together, we saw solutions none of us could have seen alone.

The Coherence Challenge: Your Worldview’s Diagnostic Test

Here’s the practical test. Can your philosophy explain these “hard-core commonsense” beliefs we all share?

That time is real
That we have at least some freedom to choose
That some things are actually right or wrong
That mathematical truths exist independently of human minds
That consciousness isn’t just an illusion
That beauty and meaning aren’t just projections

If your worldview can’t explain these without contradicting itself, perhaps, it needs new lenses.

Building Depth Perception

So where does this leave us? Not with relativism where all views are equal—that’s intellectual laziness. Instead, we need what Griffin calls a “richer naturalism” and what Clayton calls the “via media”—a worldview that includes consciousness, value, and divine presence as natural features of reality.

Think about it: We already make room for non-material realities. Where does the number 7 exist? Where does the law of gravity live? If we can include mathematical truth in our picture of reality, why not moral truth? Spiritual truth?

Three Invitations for the Journey

As I close, let me offer three invitations:

What way of knowing have you been neglecting? If you’re religious, when did you last let scientific findings genuinely challenge and deepen your faith? If you’re secular, when did you last take seriously the possibility that your sense of meaning points to something real?
Who could help you see what you’re missing? Find someone whose worldview complements yours. Learn to see through each other’s eyes.
What would change if you opened both eyes? How might your activism, relationships, and daily choices shift if you integrated both ways of knowing?

A Final Thought

The world is too beautiful, too broken, and too full of possibility for half-blind solutions. We need the full depth of human knowing—scientific and spiritual, detached and engaged, external and internal.

Your great-grandchildren are counting on us to get this right. They need ancestors who could see with both the eye of analysis and the eye of adoration, who refused to settle for half the truth when the whole truth was available.

Reality itself might be relational, calling us into the very collaboration our divided worldviews resist. Maybe the universe has been trying to teach us all along that truth isn’t something we possess individually but something we approach together.

So here’s my invitation: Take off the old glasses. Try on a prescription that corrects for both eyes. The leaves on the trees are waiting to show you their individual beauty. The faces around you have expressions you’ve been missing.

And reality itself? It’s been patiently waiting for us to see it whole. The adventure of our messy lives continues.

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