MysteriousFaith

Science & Religion Commentary

The Sinister Minister begins by responding to Harris’ argument, saying:

okay, i’m a scientist as well as the “facilitator” for our church, so i may be biased. but i firmly think science and religion can co-exist. i think that it’s a matter of realizing that each seeks truth in their own way and have two different jobs to do at the same time.

They may very well be able to co-exist; however, a necessary question is in what form. Religion that is inherently internal and non-mythological (what I’ll call secular spirituality in an upcoming essay) is of enormous value. But religion that says God actually did X, Y, and Z when X is immoral, Y is genocidal and Z is irrational is destructive. At least that’s the distinction many people such as myself would make. The Enlightenment was wrong to entirely push man into the cold world of rationality - even if that is reality. Man is a spiritual being. Now, what we each mean by “spiritual” - some who believe he has an actual ontologically separate soul that lives on after death and those who, while by no means discounting that which they have not experience and hence can not speak to, see the soul as the inner manifestations of consciousness. It’s an important distinction conceptually, but what I will grant you is that being focused on the meaningful aspects of religious experience (i.e. how does it change you and how do you engage the world differently) is where much common ground can be found.

On a side note, I’ve been exploring doing some writing on the compatibility of evolution and Christianity. To your point that science and religion are compatible I’ll initially say “not without enormous concessions on the part of religion.” Fundamentalists who deny evolution do so for really good reasons, reasons that more temperate religious voices downplay.

Maurice responds, commenting on how myth and religion can in fact co-exist without either losing their respective spheres of influence:

but see, i don’t see why a “mythological” religion can’t co-exist with science.

a myth based religion is essentially one of stories, stories that we hold in such a way that they shape and form us. nor does the idea of God actively moving in the world, whether His ways make sense to us or not, negate the value and purpose of science.

to say, for instance, God created the world does not mean that the theory of evolution (and folks tend to forget that it’s the THEORY of evolution, not the FACT of evolution) is invalid.

It’s a misunderstanding, or more graciously said, a disagreement over words. Myth in your opinion I take it is story that happens to be true and illustrates something of eternal value. Myth in my worldview is either story which, if true becomes history, or is untrue and attempts to communicate a greater conceptal, typically moralistic, truth. This is no fine distinction as Christianity claims it is a true story that illustrates a greater redeeming plan God has for the world. It takes some linguistic and logical acrobats to go from myth to true-myth. As authors (grin) you and I should be more discriminating in our choice of words - they are not the same things and deserve to be distinguished from one another.

This distinction is that much more important because of your second point that myth and science can co-exist. First, I have to be honest enough to admit the point rightly held by the basic question Ravi Zaccharias asks about the singularity of the Big Bang and the question it begs as to what preceded this, and even if you ask that question, who created the process? But seen equally honestly from the life of faith, the science of the singularity is as compatible with the unmoved mover of Socrates as the Jewish, Christian or Muslim God. Of note, that we will return to, is that logic and reason are being used to construct a response and we should be suspicious of that which uses a tool only to discard it when it forces us to a conclusion we find unsettling.

You are right that true-stories are compatible w/ science, but myth (non-historical and many times standing in opposition to reason) requires that specific ways of knowing reality be put above reason. Science begins and ends with the belief that reality can be explained in ways that are predictable and explainable. Again, to say that true-myth and science are compatible seems to be attempting to articulate that story and science can co-exist; they can, but myth-story (here focused on the supernatural) requires that faith be put above reason. Faith can not be tested (at least not in modernity - in older days before reason came to be given its primacy, faith could be tested - the inflection when this took place indicative of something else entirely … but I digress!).

To be said most fairly, your perspective argues that science exists within a way of knowing reality based on and contained within faith. Because faith cannot be tested, it resides outside and above science. It should be lost on no one that to justify this structure of knowing reality, enormous emphasis has to be put on reason, logic and rationality to find that which is unreasonable, illogical and irrational - hereby leading to the paradox of faith.

And as to “theory” of evolution. I find this an interesting way to close the comment. Evolution has predictive value, which is one of the ways the scientific process validates a theory and argues it is a law. Specifically, the predictive nature of common geneology and DNA among species is a prediction evolution’s logical extrapolation made. The best response to the question of the “theoretical” status of evolution is to point out that its predictive qualities have thus far been very compatible with over 100 years of advancing science in the field of genetics and medicine. No other theory can argue that. Evolution’s broad acceptability within the scientific community is in large part based on its ability to so adequately explain reality; when that ceases to be the case it will be discarded. This incompatibility with evidence is a unique advantage of the life of reason and science as opposed to the life of faith and one that suggests they co-exist at a cost.

For many, this cost is worth it as to resolve the disagreement would force them into a cloud of unknowing they would find deeply unsettling. I have been unsettled enough trying to make faith work and being unable to see how it does, that the unsettling nature of not knowing is where I prefer to be!

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• January 12, 2006

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