Below are my observations regarding our mistaken notions of science and religion, and how we can adjust the terms of the debate in both a more favorable, more respectful, and more accurate manner.
1.Science and Religion don’t fight. People do.
This is a corny way of pointing out that science and religion are both endeavors undertaken by human beings. In very but not entirely different ways, they are human pursuits designed to enhance our understanding and appreciation of a world that we intuitively understand is much grander and complex than ourselves, and yet one that, we hope, ultimately has some sort of underlying order to it. They are each quests conducted by imperfect and temporal beings for perfect and timeless truths, ones that may or may not be out there.
As such, science and religion can not fight (or co-exist) any more than Kantian philosophy and Computer Programming can. They are all human enterprises.
2.Peoples’ understandings of science and religion are idiosyncratic and complex.
You’ve probably noticed that even among people who identify as biblical literalists, no two literalists have quite exactly the same purportedly literal reading of the bible. (or, for that matter, take legal scholars who consider themselves to be strict constructionists...) Every act of reading is an act of translating symbols on a page to representations in the mind. As such, no two people are going to read the Good Book, or the Constitution, in exactly the same way, no matter how closely aligned their philosophical perspectives regarding how the document ought to be read.
The same is true of the scientific community. While they can be as reluctant to admit it as the biblical literalists, even the most rigorous of scientists will have differences in evaluating what data is noise and what is not, or whether anomalous test result is due to a glitch in the computer or evidence of a new and unexpected discovery. Anti-evolution and anti-global warming groups gleefully (and incorrectly) point to arcane technical disputes between evolutionary biologists over the exact nature of speciation as "proof" that evolution is not settled science. This is as absurd as claiming that slight variations in literalists’ interpretation of Genesis are proof that there is controversy within the literalist community regarding God’s existence.
Furthermore, the lessons that we draw from our readings of religion and of science are as diverse as we are. A Social Gospeler reads the New Testament as a condemnation of poverty and injustice. A student at Liberty University reads it as...well.... a condemnation of other things. With evolution, we are most familiar with those who read Darwin as giving license to "survival of the fittest" (a term that Darwin did not coin, fwiw). However, there has also been a small but influential minority of Darwinists who concluded that evolution endorsed social cooperation, even anarcho-Communism – a common struggle for survival against a harsh environment. (Think of social animals like ants, prairie dogs, ducks, bees, and so forth.)
More immediately, we have an example of this sort of idiosyncrasy from the gallup poll data. It reports that a sizable minority of respondents claim to believe both in a divinely created young earth, AND evolution over the course of millions of years. The author of the gallup article struggles to explain this, and calls it a "contradiction."
It might seem contradictory to believe that humans were created in their present form at one time within the past 10,000 years and at the same time believe that humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. But, based on an analysis of the two side-by-side questions asked this month about evolution and creationism, it appears that a substantial number of Americans hold these conflicting views.
To me, it’s not evidence that the respondents are ignoramuses incapable of recognizing conflicting ideas when presented with them. It’s evidence that their synthesis of their understanding of Genesis and evolution is more complex than what Gallup questions are designed to observe.
Upshot: We all draw at least slightly different lessons from what we read. Even when we’re reading the purportedly indisputable and timeless truths from both religion and science.
3.Historically, the examples of religious and scientific coexistence are much longer (and sadly, much more boring) than those of conflict
And this gets to the really important part of this already too-long rumination. Historians of science and religion have, over the last thirty years, rejected the notion of a timeless warfare between reason and faith as simplistic, partisan, and historically inaccurate. Instead, they have endorsed the notion of "Complexity:" that interactions between scientific and religious beliefs are shaped by particular people, places, and time-periods.
And examining those particulars, we see that while there is plenty of fodder for those who want to see a timeless battle between reason and faith, such instances are the exception, not the rule. Historically the vast preponderance of scientists have been, in some sense or another, people of faith, while people of faith have, by in large, accepted and integrated the findings of science. No two people synthesize science and religion in quite the same way or with quite the same weighting towards one or the other, but we all do it.
A few quick examples:
• Saint Thomas Aquinas argued that the "pagan" knowledge of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle was reconcilable with the teachings of the Medieval Catholic church. He argued that there could be no true conflict between religion and science, since both faith and reason were given by God. Any seeming conflict must be due to the fact that we are humans, and therefore, flawed in our understanding of both religion and nature. Something of a radical position when he first advanced it in the 1260s and 1270s, he was canonized in 1323.
• Copernicus worked as a church official, and dedicated On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres to the Pope
• Perhaps 90% of Newton’s writings were not concerned with laws of motion, calculus and gravity, but on arcane matters of early Christian history and alchemy. For generations this had been an embarrassment to historians who wanted to lionize Newton. Now, it’s considered essential to appreciate Newton’s powerful religious convictions if we wish to understand his conception of Universal Gravitation, among other things.
• Ditto for the religious inspiration behind Kepler’s formulation of the laws of planetary motion
• Gregor Mendel was a monk.
Of course, Darwin’s greatest proponent, Thomas Huxley, was a great antagonist of organized religion, and many of us know that Darwin lost his faith while he worked on evolution. Less commonly appreciated is the broader historical context surrounding these events, which make them appear far more complex than simple stories of antagonism between religion and science..
Huxley was hell-bent on turning science into a respectable profession from which ambitious young men could make a living. At the time, British science was conducted as a leisurely pursuit by gentlemen (like Darwin) who did not need to labor in order to eat, and by the clergy! Huxley’s famous battles with the English clergy were as much a contest for the professional authority to do scientific work as they were about whether science or religion was the superior worldview.
Indeed, Darwin lost his faith while compiling the research that became Origin of Species, but he came from a family with a tradition for unorthodoxy if not outright non-belief, to begin with, and most historians look at the death of his favorite daughter following a prolonged illness as the cause of his loss of faith: Darwin could not believe in a God that let young girls die terrible deaths.
Or the same with the notorious story of Galileo’s condemnation. We know the broad outlines of the Catholic Church ordering Galileo to recant his support of heliocentrism. We don’t appreciate the historical context – the middle of the Counter-Reformation, Galileo’s gross political miscalculations and coarse temperament, as well as the complex personal relationship between him, the Pope and several cardinals, which facilitated his fall from favor.
Upshot: Anyone who tries to tell you that "history proves" science and religion must conflict, even over topics like evolution, is doing violence to history.
4. If we tell people they must choose either science or religion, the majority will choose religion
For a variety of reasons that I have neither the energy nor the knowledge to get in to, partisans have been asking Americans since the late 1800s to choose a side: either you’re for science or for religion, but not both. While it was pro-science partisans who began this fight, I think that a quick survey of the political landscape establishes that this isn’t a fight that pro-science partisans are winning. If we’re going to consider ourselves members of the "reality based community," we need to acknowledge that belief in evolution has been a minority position in America for at least 25 years. If we frame the cultural issues surrounding religion and faith, issues like evolution, as either/or scenarios, most people will abandon their scientific commitments before their religious ones. This shouldn’t be particularly surprising. For most people, science isn’t immediate, it isn’t something that they can participate in, it’s not something where they have a say in what the results are. The notion that highly trained white men in labcoats far away from us get to tell us what the laws of nature are, isn’t very appetizing in a nation with a long historical tendency towards anti-intellectualism and a populist pragmatism. It has not, and will not any time soon win out against the much more immediate and egalitarian spirit of the local congregation.
5.If we tell people they can reconcile science and religion as they see fit, they just might.
Having spent a good part of my adult life talking to the religiously devout about matters of science and religion, I’ve found that very few people want to think of themselves as anti-science. But they want even less to think of themselves as anti-religion, and are convinced – whether it be due to their pastor, the talking heads, or who knows what – that they have to pick. When I tell them that they don’t have to pick one or the other, that historically, the vast number of people decide to pick both, and figure out exactly how they want to make it all fit together, on their own, I can see the sense of relief in these students’ eyes.
I’ve found that my most effective approach is to give a quick and dirty explanation to students of the long history of religious scholarship that emphasizes the "two books" of revelation – the Good Book of the Bible, and the "Book of Nature." In this view, God authored both the Bible and the laws of Nature, each is a valid source of revelation, and each is a historical process of revelation progressively brought to light with time. I remind my students of St. Thomas Aquinas, and his argument that correct science and correct theology can not conflict, as they are both divine, and that the flaw must be in our fallible understanding.
I am unapologetic in my support of evolution: it is a cornerstone of 150 years of scientific advancement, as indisputable as gravity. I am unapologetic in my refusal to treat Creationism as in any way scientific. But happily, I have found that the most intellectually honest way of speaking about the controversies surrounding science and religion is also the most respectful, and the most culturally effective. Most of the devout are not so doctrinaire that they wish to deny the authority of the Book of Nature. They just need to be convinced that evolution is a crucial chapter in that book, and that there is space enough in their personal library to add the Book of Nature without throwing out the Good Book.
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