Science is not a way of controlling the world; it is a way of understanding the world. You don’t make reality happen through science, and it’s not some force to be combated with magic or spirituality. It’s simply a systematic way of perceiving the world in great detail, and that does not have to be antithetical to spirituality

This is something that I’ve struggled with explaining to others as well. That the process of science is one of understanding the world, not enforcing a particular view upon it. That it is not the antithesis of spirituality, but rather can work with it for the enrichment of everyone. One is observational of the world around us, the other tends to be observational of the world within us and in improving our quality of life. These two overlap substantially, and do not need to be at odds with one another.

Unfortunately I frequently run into people divided into two camps. The Dawkins-like group, that denies the importance of the spiritual without examining the ramifications of this denial (unlike, say, Nietzsche, who denied the spiritual but considered those ramifications in quite some detail), and those who lose their anchor and reject science as something that attempts to bash or disprove their beliefs. This can get truly ridiculous when people start viewing all history that doesn’t agree with their preconceived view as “oppression by the establishment.”

It has been my impression that neither “side” really seems to even want to understand the other (the comments from Dawkins on theology, for example) and both seem more interested in scoring points than furthering human development.

Also–an addendum to your “lone wolf” comments. Lone wolves documented in science aren’t always sickly loners. Many times they serve as satellites or branch-offs–leaving the pack or family unit when it has reached it’s carrying capacity for the region, and/or teaming up with other loners to form new family units in other areas. The lone wolf archetype to me would represent ambition, exploration, and newness, but also riskiness, challenge and hardship.

To me, the fact that people even have to state that science and spirituality need not be at conflict only serves to reinforce the view that people are far more imbalanced in their worldviews than they care to admit (and–to varying extents, no one is exempt from this. It is all a matter of degree.)