Posts Tagged ‘Religion and science’

Is this truly an accurate assumption?  Do faith (or religion) and science have to be pursuits that are in opposition to each other?  In 2009 Pope Benedict XVI gave an address at the University of Regensburg.  This speech tried to give a perspective on the intersection of faith and reason, and subsequently religion and science.  It was a brilliantly conceived and written speech.  Unfortunately, the world focused on a quote the Pope used from a dialogue between a Byzantine emperor and a Persian intellect that reflected badly on Islam.  The press about the address centered on support for or opposition to Benedict’s statement about Islam.  His quite cogent statements about faith and reason got buried in the storm.

What did Pope Benedict say?  He began with reminiscences of his days teaching at the university, noting how, with apparent pleasure, reasonable people could disagree on such fundamental issues as religion and God.  He recalled a colleague commenting how odd it was to have two faculties at the university devoted to something that did not exist – God.  Perhaps my favorite quote from his speech is this, “The scientific ethos…is the will to be obedient to the truth, and as such, it embodies an attitude which reflects one of the basic tenets of Christianity.”  Think about this.  By seeking truth, science is reflecting a core religious value.  Science searches for the truth about the mechanics and the Church reveals truths about the “why” of the existence of the mechanics.  Rather than seeing these as incompatible, Benedict saw them as reflections of two needed basic values – faith and reason.  At the very core of his message was a plea for people to be reasonable.  People of opposing views must at least share a commitment to “reason.”  One cannot be so anchored in faith as to reject what is reasonable.

But is the reconciliation of science and faith a reasonable expectation?  When one reads the critiques of religion by Oxford professor Richard Dawkins – then probably not.  Dawkins, in an article commenting on the relative contributions of science and theology to the origins of the universe and humanity writes, “It is science and science alone that has given us this knowledge and given it, moreover, in fascinating, overwhelmingly, mutually confirming detail.  On every one of these questions, theology has held a view that has been conclusively proved wrong.”  Proceeding with even harsher words he adds, “What has theology ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody?”

Religious institutions will take varying degrees of umbrage at Dawkins’ comments.  The Catholic Church, which is the source and supporter of many distinguished institutions of higher learning, cannot give up the totally improvable concept of the resurrection.   To do so would destroy a basic underpinning of the Church.  Further, segments of the Church believe in the existence of Satan, an additional irrationality. In the larger Christian world (at least in America) a majority do not accept the science of evolution, taking the first chapters of Genesis to be literal truth.  Religious Americans who believe in the literal truth of Genesis and anyone embracing the scientific discoveries regarding the origins of the universe do not even consider the possibility that the other side is, as Pope Benedict would have said, “reasonable.”

Indeed, the word reasonable might not even be relevant when considering the human characteristic of “believing.”  We all have articles of faith on which we build our lives.  Many seem completely unreasonable to our neighbor.  Trying to understand creation, from either the science or religious perspective, is a prime battle ground for this conflict.  Yet, out of the ashes of this battle are some embers of possibility.

Recently I moderated a panel for The Village Square on issues of faith and science.  Featured on the panel was the noted physicist, Dr. Harrison Prosper.  Dr. Prosper is part of the team at CERN that discovered the Higgs boson, the particle that explains much towards how our universe actually holds together.  If you want a sample of his brilliance, please listen to this TEDX talk:


Dr. Prosper is not a religious person in any way, yet acknowledges that when looking at the complicated set of equations involved in the creation and order of the universe, one can wonder if intelligence was indeed behind it all.  Indeed there are scientists who see an intelligent hand in the structure of the universe, in both what is physically observable as well as in the math necessary to explain its structure.  For example, the value of pi (3.14…) is present in many of the equations that explain our surroundings.  Is that a calculated marker left by intelligence?

Further, the belief in scientific theory can at times be another form of faith.  All you have to do is read Thomas Kuhn’s book “Structure of Scientific Revolutions.”  Kuhn shows that stubborn belief is what happens when one scientific paradigm is about to give way to a new one.  Scientists have a history of holding onto a theory, often in the face of mounting evidence that disproves the theory.  Sometimes society will have shifted to the new change before the scientific community.  This is simply faith, but under a different guise.  While there are certainly areas of science considered universally to be true, our scientific understanding of the universe often undergoes radical revision.  During the program I moderated, I found Dr. Prosper’s most interesting statement to be his wish that everything his team had discovered would be overturned by a whole new discovery.  What makes the process exciting for human inquiry is the disproving of a theory by new, amazing evidence.  Where religion becomes “unreasonable” is when it tries to discount scientific theory without evidence, only faith that the words of the Bible are incontrovertibly true.

Judaism has little conflict with science.  We can point to numerous examples in rabbinic teaching that affirm and support scientific truth.  The model of creation proposed by the 16th century mystic, Rabbi Isaac Luria, is eerily similar to the “big bang” theory of creation, complete with a miniscule singularity point out of which all of creation explodes.  Perhaps most impressive is the work of the 13th century rabbi Maimonides, who posits that the language about God in the Torah is metaphorical, as our ability to articulate anything about God is so limited.  He goes on to teach that in order to better understand God, one must develop their intellect, and study science, philosophy and math.  Some more contemporary Jewish thought posits God not as an object, but as verb – the process of continuing existence.  Our prayers are an attempt to relate to this process, to sensitize us to the process and to find our place in it.

The scientific community need not see religion as opposition.  Rather, just as science is an attempt to explore truth, religion does the same.  But I believe the truth religion is exploring is much more and much deeper than the “why” to the mechanics of the universe.  All of us have our non-rational sides.  They are moved in different ways, music, art, spiritual wonder, and the search for meaning.   Prayer is an emotive experience, that can deeply move our souls.  Prayer can sensitize us to human suffering in ways very different than fact and research.  I do not claim everyone needs religion, just that it can provide as much as a path to meaning, to managing life as science.  In addition, religion is the primary arena in which morality and ethics evolves.  Deeply religions people can be at odds over profound moral dilemmas (see abortion, same sex marriage as examples).  Science can give us some facts to frame issues, but it is religion that leads the struggle over what our moral boundaries should be.

Finally, both religion and science must grow and evolve to remain vibrant and relevant.  Both find strength when finding a proper path that holds onto tradition and history yet changes as humans change.  At their best, religion and science travel parallel roads on their search for respective truths.

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