The elephant in the space where science vs. religion is discussed is the fact that religions in the U.S. have been in decline for over a century, not even keeping up with population growth, while many new sciences are already offering better understands of human nature, our deep sense of fair play, good and evil, empathy, altruism and compassion. While some of the loudest and most self-righteous ministers and priests star in front-page sex scandals involving mistresses, gay prostitutes or the continual sexual abuse of children and its cover-ups by priests, bishops, cardinals and Popes, secular sciences are earning respect and trust from both our heads and our hearts.
"Science vs. religion" harangues have been our distractions-du-jour for awhile now, with no sign of letting up. But one of their fundamental assumptions is clearly wrong. Religion writers act like the two fields are both powerful contenders. But while our sciences grow more numerous and relevant every day, the future of U.S. religions doesn’t look bright.
Christianity in the U.S. hasn’t kept up with population growth for well over a century. Fewer than 18% of Americans attend ANY church regularly, while between 2000-2005, church attendance declined in all fifty states. Christian churches in the U.S. are losing two million members a year. Meanwhile, from just 1990 to 2001, nonbelievers more than doubled: from 14 million to 29 million, from 8% of the country to 14 percent. And since it’s hard to believe that nonbelievers would have the nerve to tell pollsters that, it’s likely that the real number of the "church alumni" is much larger.
Some people still like to say, as Stephen Jay Gould did, that science and religion don’t overlap. But the growth of sciences and the decline of religions is happening – at least in part – precisely in the important areas in which they DO overlap. Sciences are providing persuasive explanations for questions about human nature, the origin and essence of good and evil, and the source of our empathy and compassion. And none of their explanations use religious scriptures and traditions.
Frans De Waal, one of our most respected primatologists, says bluntly that "our morality is a product of the same selection process that shaped our competitive and aggressive side." (See Our Inner Ape, p. 237). When I (a retired liberal minister) visited him in Atlanta a few years ago, he asked an intriguing rhetorical question: "How could religions have any special knowledge about human nature? They’re just too NEW!"
Until quite recently, we didn’t even know how to THINK of religions whose origins go back several thousand years as "too new." Nor did we know that many of our most moral and caring behaviors are shared with thousands of other species. But sciences like ethology (comparative animal behavior), cosmology, evolutionary psychology, several neuro-sciences and more are constructing higher and higher towers of understanding, and doing the collaborative interdisciplinary work needed to build bridges between them. They have treated these abiding human questions as empirical, and are finding clearer and more persuasive empirical answers from the sciences than we can find in the religions – all this without holy wars, torture, witch hunts, or the habitual sex abuse of children. On the moral frontier, it is ironic to notice that the good people are wearing white lab coats, while ministers dress in the traditional black clothing of the bad people.
We have moved into the era of Secular Religion. We already expect our sciences to describe the facts around and within us. But they are also finding more and better explanations of the evolutionary roots of behaviors showing forms of empathy, fair play, compassion, grief, altruism – even "burial" ceremonies in elephants, foxes, magpies and more. To put it in biblical terms, they are eating fruits from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, becoming – as the authors of Genesis foresaw – "like unto gods."
Religion lost us by wrapping its teachings in the old shawl of supernaturalism, demeaning our lives here and now against a mythical promise of living for billions and billions of years somewhere else. If people actually believed that their church, or any church, could make good on that promise, church attendance would approach 100% of the population. No matter what people tell pollsters they believe, they’re voting with their feet every Sunday as more and more shrug off the unappealing religions and their faux promises. The religious ennui is strengthened by the continual spectacles of evangelical ministers and anti-gay politicians getting caught – after ending their speeches with "God bless America" – with their mistresses or paid lovers.
Yes, this could just mean that we’re becoming atheistic, anti-religious, cold shallow rationalists and worse. But it could also mean – and at its best it DOES mean – that we are interested in living wisely and compassionately here and now, rather than elsewhere and later.