In which I provide some thoughts on science and religion and my personal journey.
There have been many DKos articles lately attacking and defending atheism and religion. I have been working on this article for several years now, and this seems like a good place and time to finally let it out.
I was raised in a casual Christian, i.e., Protestant, family. Mom and Dad attended church regularly — every Christmas and Easter and one or two Sundays in between. We kids were indoctrinated into the faith early — baptism, Sunday School every week, youth groups, joined the Church when our time came due. Always loved the music, enjoyed the social events and interactions. It was a great way to meet girls that Mom and Dad would automatically approve of, no arguments there.
In school, I always loved the science and math classes, and how they explained things logically that had seemed mysterious. And the stuff I didn’t understand yet, well, there was this feeling that the classes next year or the year after, or college, would explain that too. Science classes taught us that the universe was knowable and predictable.
But all the spiritual and mystical stuff on Sundays always bothered me, even as a kid. I remember thinking that there must be a trick — these people can’t really accept the scientific explanations for the way the world works, and also believe the supernatural stuff that’s in all the prayers and sermons and creeds, could they? The music was cool, of course, and the girls. But c’mon, the sun standing still, and people being swallowed by whales? Snakes and apples and a guy walking on water and raising the dead?? Non-overlapping magisteria?
Then I went off to college. I still remember that seminal day in my Philosophy 101 class many decades ago when we all walked in and found the following 4 sentences written on the board:
- God exists
- God is all-powerful
- God is good
- Evil exists
It’s not hard to see that those 4 sentences are mutually exclusive and can’t possibly all be true. The discussion that day went on to show how every religion on Earth has struggled to explain the obvious contradictions.
The Greeks avoided the dilemma by proposing a cornucopia of gods with varying interests and abilities, none of which were omnipotence. (Ya gotta love the Greeks, man. Their gods were fun.)
Atheists of course have no problem with the dilemma. Throw out premise 1 and all the contradictions disappear. But that of course is neither convincing nor palatable for most of the 7 billion human inhabitants of the planet, so let’s agree to keep premise 1 intact for the moment.
How do Christians deal with the dilemma? Early Christian scholars proposed the concept of Hell and Satan and a competition for the human soul, which of course subtly undermines the second premise, thereby leaving some room for God to keep Her head and Her hegemony. Of course, there is no evidence of Satan or Hell, or Heaven, or even of God Herself. So the arguments for their existence must come from some other place. Some place where evidence doesn’t count. Christians call it Faith.
Humans need faith, first cousin to hope — the thing with feathers that perches in the soul. Humans associate faith with an unknowable God because it reassures them. Faith gets us through hard times and helps us heal when tragedy inevitably strikes. Faith allows for hope when logic dictates that hope is lost. Faith helps explain what would otherwise be inexplicable. Chaos without God is terrifying. Humans get defensive when their faith is attacked. They appear anxious to justify their faith to their critics, and maybe to themselves. The American philosopher William James wrote an entire book, “The Will to Believe,” that argued that it’s ok to accept on faith things for which there is no evidence. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal took it a step further. It’s safer and less risky, he wagered, to have faith in God than not to believe because the consequences of being wrong are far less serious.
Faith demands belief without evidence, even belief in the face of contrary evidence. Logic has never been a defining feature of any religion. Attacking a religion because it is illogical is trivial but pointless. Religious leaders learned long ago that their followers must be inoculated against logical attacks. Cognitive dissonance is required for the true believer to accept ideas like miracles and divine intervention and an afterlife while still being able to function in the Earthly realm. Faith sustains us when evidence makes faith illogical. It’s circular but it works.
In the Earthly magisterium, on the other hand, science requires evidence. Science is by definition the process of turning evidence into knowledge.
A scientific theory is a model of how some aspect of the universe works in terms that the human brain can comprehend. Scientific theories are always developed to explain why stuff happens the way it does. A scientific theory succeeds or fails based solely on its ability to both explain events in the past and to predict future events. The Copernican sun-centered model of the solar system replaced the old Ptolemaic Earth-centered model because it was much better at predicting stuff like eclipses and the positions of planets. So when the atom was discovered and its structure was hypothesized, it was eminently plausible that a model of the atom would be similar to the solar system model, with electrons revolving in orbits around the nucleus, just like the planets revolve around the Sun. But a scientific theory must be able to predict future outcomes just the way the theory of the solar system is able to forecast solar eclipses and rocket trajectories to other planets. When problems with Bohr’s orbital model of the atom began to surface from new evidence, Schrodinger’s wave model was proposed that worked even better.
Science is the process of turning evidence into knowledge. Scientific theories either predict future outcomes correctly or they don’t. When they don’t, they must be modified or replaced. The only faith required of science is the faith that the universe is knowable, and that with new evidence and better insight, human knowledge will grow. The fact that we sometimes get the science wrong doesn’t mean that science is useless or arbitrary, it just means that we haven’t yet fully applied the evidence to complete our understanding. Science has been remarkably successful over the past 400 years, expanding our understanding of atoms and galaxies, enabling missions to other planets, understanding Earth’s history and its future, forming the basis of computers and televisions and cell phones, preserving sounds and images of the past, protecting us against deadly diseases, allowing us to navigate cities we’ve never visited. Science exists, and it works.
When I say “science,” I am referring to all the laws of physics, biology, cosmology, etc., that comprise the universe. Those laws have always existed and can eventually be understood by the human mind— that’s my faith. The laws of physics that defined the Big Bang, the stars, and the formation of all the elements 13.7 billion years ago are the same laws that define the reaction between hydrogen atoms in our sun and every other star today. The science that has kept our planets in orbit for 5 billion years is the same science that causes a baseball to land 400 feet away when Albert Pujols hits a home run. The scientific method is our feeble attempt to understand those laws and to predict future events based on that understanding.
So can one believe in both Science and God? How can we ultimately resolve the contradiction of the 4 premises? Can miracles happen? Is cognitive dissonance always required?
If religion requires that you believe illogical things, then some amount of cognitive dissonance will always be necessary. If you believe that the world was created in 6 days 6000 years ago AND you also believe that the Big Bang that was the genesis of our universe occurred 13.7 billion years ago, then you are the embodiment of cognitive dissonance. If you believe that 2000 years ago, a human was born of a virgin mother, who then went on to turn water into wine, walk across a sea, and bring dead folks back to life, then you have rejected the science that says that none of those things are possible.
Some have argued that religious myths are not intended to be taken literally. That religion can be true in a metaphorical sense that allows its adherents to follow its precepts without falling into the logical fallacy trap. There are obvious pitfalls to this line of thinking. Would all proponents of any religion agree to give up the literal belief in miracles and supernatural explanations for happenings in our Earthly realm? Would Christians, for example, be willing to state that Jesus wasn’t really born of a virgin — it’s just a beautiful myth? That Jesus’ father wasn’t really God, except in a metaphorical sense? That Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead and ascend into Heaven in any literal sense? Would Christians accept that Islamic myths or Hindu myths or Taoist myths are equally valid and beautiful? From my experience with Christian believers, a literal Christian interpretation of Biblical events and parables is foundational. They believe in the absolute truth of their teachings. They necessarily reject the myths of other religions as just wrong.
We each must come to terms with science, faith, and cognitive dissonance in our own way. We can reject God, we can reject science, or we can try to accept both without having our heads explode. We can argue that religion is really just metaphor and not intended to be believed literally. Or maybe we can just push ahead and avoid thinking about it — after all, most people claim to believe in both God and science, and some of them are still able to function.
I in fact stumbled into my own epiphany when I was least expecting it. Can someone believe in both God and Science? What if, I asked, God and Science are not in competition? What if God and Science are one and the same thing? What if God is Science and Science is God? What if the magisteria really do overlap?
Let’s see what happens if we substitute Science for God in each of the 4 premises we started with.
- Science exists
- Science is all-powerful
- Science is good
- Evil exists
It becomes pretty obvious where the original dilemma came from, and why it vanishes with this simple transformation. Clearly premises 1 and 2 are self-evident. “Science is true,” says Neil deGrasse Tyson, “whether or not you believe in it.” But the concepts of good and evil are human social constructs, not provable scientific outcomes. Science explains stuff, but it doesn’t assign any moral value to the explanations. So premise 3 is meaningless and premise 4 becomes irrelevant.
Replacing God with Science clears up many, many mysteries, absurdities, and contradictions in the world’s religions. It’s consistent and logical, it’s comprehensive, and it doesn't require supernatural explanations for, well, anything. Science explains what were formerly mysteries without resorting to supernatural, illogical, disprovable constructs. Eclipses and plagues and thunderstorms, earthquakes and the phases of the moon and sexual reproduction — all once mystical, all now explained by Science. When Science doesn’t have an answer, just wait, it will soon enough. It always has. And best of all, Science doesn’t require belief in concepts that are scientifically disprovable - by definition.
So that’s why I can state unequivocally that I am a man of faith. I have faith in Science. My faith sustains me and makes me stronger. All Praise Be To Science. Inshallah.
And I have Evidence.
If you are still reading, thank you for listening.
