A God-of-the-Gaps AntiStory
More likely than not, you know someone who goes to local storytelling events, you’ve listened to The Moth, you’ve read about the characters featured on People of New York and its innumerable spin-offs. Stories are popular in everyday society and within academia-- they are interesting, impactful, and imbued with insight. Though often factual or factually-based, stories and narrative capture attention in compelling ways. There are undoubtedly stories told about science and religion, some more enticing, but some more credible, than others.
10/10 would recommend this podcast, entertaining and thoughtful
For instance, there is a rather common vision that our society is progressively overcoming the darkness of religious totalitarianism. The story goes that even from its early days, from the times of human sacrifice and worship of celestial objects, humanity invented various religions as a means to secure power, justify oppression, and explain the world around them. But today's hope, as summarized by philosopher Keith Ward, is that, "By the cold clear light of reason, we will be able to devise a more humane, less authoritarian morality and plan the human future calmly and wisely, without bowing before unseen forces that demand human sacrifice—of the intellect, if not of actual flesh". (1)
Many religious people would respond to this scientistic narrative in protest because it simply does not represent their own stories. Motivated by the palpable peace, joy, and hope of their religious experiences, they might answer this trust in cold reason with faith in an infinitely wise God. Their faith stands in the face of a multitude of research studies that suggest natural explanations different from what they might believe. The humble will stand as hubris eventually burns those flying too close to the sun. As scientific theories and societal trends fade away, the faithful will remain.
These are two possible stories, two possible lenses through which the world can be seen. But the stories we intend to tell in this series are of people who have reached the entirely different conclusion than the ones above. Rather than insisting that science has moved humanity past religion or that faith will reign after science's downfall, these people will insist that science and religion cannot replace one another. In previous posts, we have investigated the stories of Science and Religion on our own, but now is the time to let these scholars have their own voices here, because the storyteller is as important as the story. They are the ones, after all, who give the stories of Science and Religion credibility and credibility, some would say, is what the whole conflict is about. (2)
The Middle Ground
To find a beginning of this story, we could look to the start of Christianity. Early pillars of the Christian faith, from Basil to Augustine to Aquinas, looked to natural philosophy in their theologies. St. Augustine, whose broader theology is revered by many conservative Christians, commented as early as the 400’s on the importance of understanding nature according to the best of human reason. His reprimand to the Christian who doesn’t is ruthless: "Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world...and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn...If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think the pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?” (3)
That quote, for many in Science in Religion, sums up the whole point of the fight for the middle ground between science and religion. However, the story continues. Saint Thomas Aquinas in the 1200's developed principles of reason to use in approaching one’s faith in God, and he was not afraid of the complexity of faith and reason. He holds nothing back when he says, "Just as, therefore, it would be the height of folly for a simple person to assert that what a philosopher proposes is false on the ground that he himself cannot understand it, so (and even more so) it is the acme of stupidity for a man to suspect as false what is divinely revealed through the ministry of the angels simply because it cannot be investigated by reason." (4)
See, Augustine and Aquinas make it clear that religion has never belonged in its typecast role as the antagonist of science and that faith is not about blind acceptance of beliefs without evidence. (5) In fact, in previous centuries, religion wasn't as much about beliefs as it was about practices. There wasn't even a word for what we call religion today. Religion as we understand it was a seamless part of societies, without separation and the fact that societies look so different from one another in many significant ways is important. It shows that religions in no way may be said to all be basically the same, which is religion scholar Stephen Prothero’s story. (6)
Historian Peter Harrison teaches that Protestant Christianity in great part made the modern importance of evidence possible. "In rejecting allegory and insisting instead that the Bible, the book of God’s words, was to be read for its literal or historical sense,” Harrison says of the Protestant Reformers of the 1500’s, “they inadvertently made possible a new approach to that other ‘book’, the book of nature. That new approach was essentially a scientific one". (7) Harrison's main point that the "literalist mentality characteristic of early modern Protestants gave rise to a worldview that provided a congenial environment for the flourishing of the natural sciences." (8)
If science has roots in religion, then it seems odd that there would be such apparent conflict between the two today. It is this incongruence that compels historians John Hedley Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor to work their way through the stories that have been told about science and religion, from Columbus to Darwin, from Freud to Dawkins, to tell compellingly and realistically what has happened during these conflicts of science and religion. They show how people reacted and why the stories have been told they way they have been. Their work is engaging, thorough, and exposes the obvious but difficult-to-remember reality that no story is one-sided. Brooke, himself an agnostic, concludes that "much of the conflict ostensibly between science and religion turns out to have been between new science and the sanctified science of the previous generation." (9) In other words, science and religion are not at the root of the problem; it is the way in which some people form their beliefs without for developments in knowledge that breeds conflict.
Such a God-of-the-gaps mentality, where doctrine serves as immutable pseudo-science, of which both atheists and Christians are at times guilty, is exactly what chemist Charles Coulson fights against. Charlie, as he was better known, was one of those guys with equally tremendous amounts of energy, kindness, and brilliance. He was an adoring father, prolific Oxford researcher in valence bond theory, lay Methodist preacher, co-founder of the international charity Oxfam, and mountain hiker, among other things. He taught against the idea that God explains the inexplicable until God is rendered unnecessary by science. He fought for recognition of the truths in science and religion, proclaiming that "On the technical scientist the responsibility is to reflect: to realize that not all truth has been given to him, or even can be described in his particular language...On the technical Christian the obligation is to open his mind to the wonders of God revealed in science, and to accept gladly the insight provided by science." (10)
Because the thing is, we will never be free from the necessity of faith. As physicist and astronomer Stephen Barr reminds us, there is undoubtedly a dimension of faith involved in all forms of human knowledge, even in science. Barr says that this does nothing to discredit either science or religion, but that, “In fact, it is quite typical of such scenarios with many universes or domains that the entities they postulate cannot be directly seen by us. This is not something that should cause anyone to mock these ideas. They are very serious ideas and one of them may someday be shown to be right. However, it should make religious believers less embarrassed by the fact that some of the entities they talk about also cannot be dragged in to the laboratory.” (11)
And so, we return to philosopher Keith Ward who concludes that "The picture does not seem to be one of linear progress from religion through metaphysics to science. It is more like a picture of an undoubted growth in knowledge and understanding, in religion, morality, and science alike, alongside a misuse of that knowledge in the name of the naked will to power and world domination." (12) Religious people are not in some way less intelligent or less enlightened than the non-religious. But neither should religious persons deny the insights, and discoveries of mainstream science. Science and religion both have the potentials for greatness and misuse and they need one another in order to mature well.
These scholars telling the stories of Science and Religion are renowned professors of the world’s leading universities, pastors and priests of churches, and scientists with prolific careers. There are more scholars with an interest in science and religion than can be mentioned here, like mathematician Blaise Pascal, astrophysicist Arthur Eddington, theologian and biochemist Arthur Peacocke, physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne, theologian Nancy Murphy, or geneticist Francis Collins. Their stories are credible and not to be easily discounted— you could read for years and never come close to finishing all that supports this Science and Religion perspective. If we can listen to these stories and learn to be self-critical instead of clinging to the more simple conflict narratives of science versus religion, Ward says, “there can be a long and positive future for human life and for whatever forms of life may develop from it." (13) It's precisely at the future and its forms of life where we are aiming next.
(1) Ward, Keith. The Big Questions in Science and Religion. West Conshohocken, Pa: Templeton Foundation Press, 2008, pg. 217.
(2) Barr, Stephen M. Modern Physics and Ancient Faith. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006, pg. 2.
(3) Augustine. The Literal Meaning of Genesis. Translated by John Hammond Taylor. Vol. 41–42. Ancient Christian Writers. New York, N.Y: Newman Press, 1982, pg. 42-43.
(4) Aquinas, Thomas. “Summation of the Catholic Faith.” In Cultural Perspectives: A Sourcebook, edited by Rosemary Mims Fisk and John Mayfield, 1:161–68. Copley Custom Textbooks, 2003, pg. 163.
(5) Donaldson, Steve. Dimensions of Faith: Understanding Faith through the Lens of Science and Religion. Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2015.
(6) Prothero, Stephen R. God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World. 1st. ed. New York: HarperOne, 2011.
(7) Harrison, Peter. “The Bible and the Emergence of Modern Science.” Science & Christian Belief 18, no. 2 (October 2006): 115–32, pg. 116.
(8) Ibid, pg. 131.
(9) Brooke, John Hedley, and Geoffrey N. Cantor. “Natural Theology and the History of Science.” In Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion, 141–75. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998, pg. 49-50.
(10) Coulson, Charles A. Christianity in an Age of Science. Riddell Memorial Lectures; 25th Series. London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1953, pg. 51.
(11) Barr, Stephen M. Modern Physics and Ancient Faith. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006, pg. 58.
(12) Ward, Keith. The Big Questions in Science and Religion. West Conshohocken, Pa: Templeton Foundation Press, 2008, pg. 6.
(13) Ibid, pg. 242-243.
