Science and Religion

Don: We have discussed forgiveness as a key element of community, and saw that Jesus made clear there should be no limits on it. He also, in the Lord’s Prayer, made clear that we must forgive others before god will forgive us.

Scripture links forgiveness to confession, yet on several occasions— most notably and sweepingly, when he was dying on the cross—Jesus forgave people without their seeking it (“Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”) As well, numerous passages say that god forgives us for his own sake.

Forgiveness can have a real therapeutic effect on both forgiver and forgiven. But the links that Jesus makes between sin and disease or deformity, and forgiveness and physical healing, has troubled some in our group as having been refuted, by and large, by medical science.

For primitive man, god was the source of every observed phenomenon and was present in every element of the physical world, in every star and every blade of grass. God explained the world. At the time of Jesus, god was in, and was the cause of, anything inexplicable. But Jesus in his ministry presented a radically new worldview, which he called the kingdom of heaven.

In the 21st century worldview, staunch believers may still insist that with sufficient faith it is possible to heal the sick, walk on water, love one’s enemies, and so on. But the paucity of evidence of such miracles has contributed to much disillusionment and even outright rejection of things of the spirit. It is as if science makes more sense to people than god does.

The separation of things of the spirit from things of the physical world originated with the Greek Gnostics, who thought the body was controlled by certain physical characteristics, that the spirit was controlled by spiritual things, and that a lower world was responsible for knowledge and understanding. Gnosticism placed greater authority on the religious hierarchy and led to much mysticism and self-denial and renunciation of the physical world. A diluted form of gnosticism survives in the Christian church today.

The cause and effect that we see so prevalent in things of faith are deeply rooted in this kind of concept, but Jesus taught something diametrically opposed to it. He taught that in the kingdom of heaven: One does not get what one deserves—one gets undeserved grace; the first is last; one must turn the other cheek; and so on. There is a dichotomy in the Christian experience between the irrationality of the spiritual and the rationality of the physical (and therefore scientifically explainable) worlds.

Jesus placed a lot of emphasis on healing both body and mind. How should we understand those concepts today, in a world in which the wind and the waves and the song of a bird are not the mysterious workings of god but physical phenomena explicable by science? There seems to be less and less need for god as science demystifies the world; witness the decline in church membership, especially in Europe.

This has led to the development of the “God of the Gaps” theory, which posits that god fills in the gaps in understanding that science is unable to explain. The risk is that scientific advances will eventually close the gaps and leave no room for god. Indeed, in some modern cultures, this may already have occurred on a significant scale. Westminster Abbey contains many tourists but few worshipers at Sunday services.

How can science and religion co-exist? It has been said that nature is god’s second book. But why would he write a book that is at odds with the bible? The late Stephen J. Gould proposed a theory of “non-overlapping magisteria” that says science and religion occupy totally different “domains of teaching authority” (magisteria), each made up of totally different phenomena, that can never meet. This theory is now being challenged by people both in science and religion who believe that there is some significant overlap between the realms; that there are areas that can coexist within the human heart and the human mind and thereby enrich our understanding of the universe. The argument is that there are good tools of science to probe scientific—physical—questions about how things happen and good tools of religion to probe religious—metaphysical—questions about why things happen.

The apostle Thomas, who had watched the crucifixion and saw Jesus die, was late in his quest to see the risen Jesus, and he demanded a sort of habeas corpus—scientific proof of the Resurrection.

John 20:24-25

… [Thomas] was not with [the other disciples] when Jesus came. So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

So what do you think about science and religion? About the god of the gaps? About overlapping or non-overlapping magisteria? About David’s vision of an eventual unification of science and spirit?

David: The scientific method starts with an hypothesis and tests it until it arrives (or not) at a theory. The measure and value of a theory is how well it explains some phenomenon of nature—its “explanatory power.” We seek what Don has called “rich” explanation and understanding of the world, and science has demonstrably and increasingly provided it. Far from enriching our understanding, however, religion at best has added nothing to it and at worst would impoverish it by stripping away the gains in understanding delivered by science.

Two thousand years ago, of course the sun orbited the earth. No question. Dare to suggest otherwise, and look what happened to Galileo. I get a diluted form of the church’s response to Galileo, when I talk to religionists about the probability that science will find the way to immortality, and has already found the way to the creation of life itself. Man said: Let there be life! And lo, there it was. Not much to look at yet, but then, neither was the life in the primordial soup. But where were the shrill newspaper headlines announcing this shattering news? Where were the panicked sermons at church? Where was the guidance?

The world is changing around them in the most fundamental ways, yet our religions act as though nothing has changed. Our group, thankfully, is prepared to discuss such issues, but the bigger church is not, apparently. The explanations offered by religion seem less and less satisfying, less and less relevant to the world we observe around us.

Charles: Science has certainly evolved and will continue to evolve to explain natural phenomena. It will always be inadequate to explain the things that are not of this world. The extent to which one holds fast to, or at some level perhaps even worships, the things of this world, is the extent to which one brings suffering upon oneself. All things of the world are impermanent, so even the immortality of which David spoke is not truly permanent but bounded by the eventual decay and death of the universe.

Most of our suffering is linked to the impermanence of the things of the world. The impermanence of Jesus’ physical life on earth points us to something that lies beyond the natural world and outside our admittedly increasing ability to explain and understand it. The two worlds have to coexist because they are interdependent on the very basis of impermanence. If the physical body and the natural world are impermanent and there were no permanence beyond it, then there could be no point or purpose to the impermanent existence other than to use it to seek the permanent!

Michael: I dislike arrogance of any sort—religious or scientific. Science can’t explain further back than the Big Bang. Evolution offers great insights but even as a scientist I see it being sometimes pushed too far in explaining the world. But science can counter the arrogance of a religion that says everything can be explained through reference to god. Science can fight superstition. But religion can offer the scientist support when s/he realizes that something is missing from the scientific explanation. I can only believe in god by sensing him. I can’t see or hear or measure him in some experiment. Yet I do believe in him. Why? Religion might provide some insight, some help to science, but in order to do so religion must be stripped of its obfuscating superstitions. So science can help religion see past its superstitions and religion can help science see beyond its boundaries.

David: I enjoy reading some of the thoughtful atheist and humanist writers such as Sam Harris and Dan Dennett. But it strikes me that the passion they expend in presenting their cases points to their own, very human, need to understand the deep questions of religion, and therefore to the validity of such questioning. Richard Dawkins is a fine biologist yet has chosen to put his profession aside in order to write and speak about his interpretation of religious issues and his responses to them.

If the issues are not of fundamental importance, why should these good and capable people waste their time addressing them? Science will never fully answer religious questions, but religious dogma prevents many from seeing where science is valid. Dogma is treated as sacrosanct by the churches. It is dogma that stokes the passion of the humanists and atheists, as it should, because dogma has caused and still today causes far more harm than good. The danger of dogma is that it loses sight of the baby (the spirit) in the bathwater (the dogma). I see much of the bible as dogmatic and would like to see it edited down to reveal the real Truth it contains, mainly in the teachings of Jesus. Dogma obfuscates and drives people away when, as must inevitably happen, it is shown up as mere dogma by science.

Michael: I used to have similar concerns about the bible, but now I think I was biased against it by antagonistic feelings toward my church. It is just a book, with many human-made errors in it, but it still contains much worth reading.

David: There is one area where science and religion could come together: What the scriptures call “fasting” toward the goal of everlasting life, science calls “caloric restriction” and has proven that it can significantly extend life. Perhaps the churches should put more emphasis on this—they would advance both body and spirit—yet the churches seem more concerned with meaningless 2,000-year-old rituals than with gluttony and obesity.

Charles: The bible stories have to be put in historical and social context. They may have been misinterpreted in places, but in focusing on justice, forgiveness, community, morality, and other non-physical concepts they still provide a structure for living in society, guidelines for right behavior, and support for the universal search for spirituality.

I do not share David’s optimism that mankind will figure out how to live forever. In the reality of a “threescore years and ten” [Postcript: Psalm 90:10; since superseded by science, which has brought it closer to fourscore years and ten!—DE]  lifespan, our biggest existential question is: “Why are we here for such a brief time?”

Without the moral compass of scripture, it seems to me unlikely that we would focus on things beyond the physical world.

David: That is not inconsistent with my views, provided that the core principles—the essence—of scripture is right. I believe Jesus’ statements of what those core principles are—love, forgiveness, grace, and not much else (including, not justice!)—to be right. If everyone let themselves be guided by those core principles, then law and justice would be superfluous.

Alice: If only science and religion could at least acknowledge that the most fundamental question of all—the Beginning and the End, the alpha and omega, of all—has zero scientific answer and one religious answer: God.

Science can do amazing things, including maybe extending life. But the more we worship the wonders of science versus god’s core principles, the less point and purpose  there is to life of any length.

Charles: As Jesus said, we should value the innocence of the child over the wisdom of the elder.  I take this to mean that children are, and have to be, much more dependent on some higher power than on their brains. We should seek to be more like the child.

Don: The higher power is critical to the child’s very existence. S/he would literally die without it.

Chuck: By making us think about such things, scripture provides an invaluable service.

David: The 12 Step Program for alcoholics and other addicts begins first with an admission that one is broken, and second that only a power beyond oneself can repair the damage.

Alice: It is true of life in general.

Don: Yes, all of us are broken, addicted. All of us need a higher power to repair us.

Going back to science and religion: Is there integrity in trying to use scripture to explain physical nature? Churches have always done so. Galileo was sanctioned because he challenged the church’s explanation of the solar system. Even today, many churches and religions use the “science” in scripture to defend their positions on celibacy for priests, on gender issues, on the ordination of women, and so on on. Is this fair to scripture? If we better understood the contexts within which scripture was written, if we concentrated more on the implicit meaning within scripture than on the specific wording, would this bring peace between religion and science?

Robin: Last week David commented after class that if humans achieve immortality they would still have to physically change to survive climate change, the swelling of the Sun into red giant-hood, and to travel space in search of new planets to live on.

In John 14:1-6 Jesus also said there was more than just our earthly life:

“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

Peter talked about Jesus returning to Earth to take the non-wicked people away from it:

2 Peter 3:3-13:

Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.” For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.

Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

In Revelation 21:1-4 John says:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”

David: Robin has just provided biblical support for two of my favorite theories: “Process theology” which posits that god is both a Being and a Becoming; and Nobel physics laureate Frank Tipler’s “Omega Point Theory,” which posits that the universe will collapse back on itself until it reaches the Big Crunch—which is also the Big Bang—alpha and omega unified, the Being of god. Is that “the Day of the Lord”?

Alice: So science and religion seem to going hand in hand.

David: I would rather say science and spirituality. Science and our inner light. I would not even say “science and the bible,” because a substantial proportion of the world’s population has never read it or even heard of it, yet (in the case of Chinese people I have known personally) they have the inner light and they do brilliant science and they have just the same questions about the two magisteria. The bible—all scripture—gets in the way, for the most part.

Charles: The “perversion” that every word of the bible is meant to be taken literally, and the failure of those literal words to adequately explain scientifically determined fact, is used by some to denigrate spirituality. The words are—language is—just a medium for communication, but in this case Marshall McLuhan was wrong: The medium is not the message. Especially considering how old some of these scriptures are, and how often they have been re-translated. But even so, the central guidance remains intact. For some, the structure provided by a church or a religion is essential to receiving and understanding this guidance; to others, it is not.

Don: This is very much in line with our long discussion, some months back, about the the developmental “stages of faith” in individuals as they go through their spiritual journeys.

I believe that the use of the science textbook to find god may be as erroneous as using the bible to find science. This sounds a bit like the theory of non-overlapping magisteria, but I wonder if there is not a way to bring the two together, at least by removing the antagonistic feelings at the interface and leading to a more comprehensive understanding of our universe.

We will discuss these issues further.

* * *