Must Religion And Science Conflict?
Bible Study
Questions Of Faith For Inquiring Believers
Must religion and science conflict? This question nags at people of faith. On the one hand, some in the scientific community have concluded that religion has outlived its usefulness and needs to be abandoned to the primeval forest of magic and superstition. At the same time, some religious folks insist that being faithful requires abandoning the claims of science because they do not adhere to biblical teaching. Have we no choice? Must we decide to be people of science or people of faith?
Not many centuries ago there was not a choice. In the Middle Ages, theology was "Queen of the Sciences" and if the church said it was true, that is what you believed. In the seventeenth century, the Italian physicist, Galileo Galilei, claimed the earth revolved around the sun. He had looked through a telescope and that is what he saw. Today we know he was correct, but at the time the church taught that the sun revolved around the earth. It was reported that a theologian in the city of Padua kept his faith pure by refusing to look through Galileo's telescope lest he see what he was instructed not to believe. For his scientific contribution, Galileo was forced to make a public statement that he really did not believe what he had discovered. Church officials then kept him under house arrest for most of the remainder of his life. In an earlier century, scientific discovery adapted to religious teaching.
When they conflict today, it is more likely that religious teaching will be asked to accommodate scientific discovery. In fact, contemporary researchers can be as unsympathetic toward religion as medieval church leaders were toward Galileo. Evolution has been a battleground between science and religion for 150 years. Nobel Prize winner Edward Wilson illustrates the sharply drawn line. "Genetic chance," he insists, "and environmental necessity, not God, made the human species."1
In one sense, the lines of conflict between religion and science seem sharper and deeper and less likely to be traversed than ever. That is unfortunate because both science and religion are important. We should not be forced to choose. The reality is, however, that most people see them in conflict.
There are a couple simple reasons for this. Religion and science have different standards for deciding truth and they have different areas of interest. Let me explain briefly. First, science and religion frequently battle because they decide truth in very different ways. To use the word from Introduction to Philosophy, they have different epistemologies. Science decides fact with data gathered through the senses and verified by the observations of others. Religion agrees that knowledge emerges from reason and empirically-verified observations. However, religion also accepts things as true on the authority of scripture and the experiences of the community of believers.
The Bible illustrates nicely how these different methods for determining fact lead to conflict. After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to the disciples in the upper room. All were there, save one -- Thomas. When he returned, the other disciples were excited to tell him, "Jesus is not dead. He is alive. In fact, he came right into this room and stood over there. He is risen."
Thomas, the doubting disciple who exemplified a scientific approach to determining truth, did not share their excitement. He wanted to see and touch Jesus' wounds. As a modern, scientific representative at the resurrection, Thomas limited truth to empirical evidence confirmed by the senses.
A week later, Jesus returned to the upper room. This time, Thomas was present. The Master called Thomas toward him. "Put your finger here, and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side" (John 20:27). The disciple stepped forward and touched Jesus. "My Lord and my God," he confessed.
After the Master settled Thomas' demand for scientific evidence, he turned his attention to the religious way of knowing. Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe" (John 20:29).
Science and religion have two very different ways of determining the nature of things. Science limits itself to data gathered through the senses of sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. Religion casts a wider net for truth. Science insists that "I must touch the wounds in his hands before I believe." Religion goes beyond that. "Blessed are those who believe even when they don't get to see and touch."
This scientific approach can, at times, be superior to a religious way of knowing. At the Temple of the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece, a burning gas jet was revered as a manifestation of some earth god. A few centuries ago, a man mining for salt struck a vein of gas and it exploded. The poor miner thought he had broken through to the bowels of hell itself. Thanks to science, we neither worship natural gas as a god nor fear it as a demon. We use it to heat our homes. We can thank scientific understanding for that.
At other times, our full humanness needs a fuller view of truth. I have watched the piano tuner working with an oscillating Stroboscope, tightening and loosening the strings so that each key of the properly tuned grand piano will resonate at exactly the correct number of vibrations. Having the piano in perfect tune, however, does not begin to explain the experience of hearing Chopin. Music needs a fuller understanding of truth.
As one whose early training was as a scientist, I am convinced that evolution does a good job explaining the paleontology and biology of human development. However, my experiences of what it means to be human go far beyond the sum of all the facts of science. Scientifically, human beings consist of ten to twenty dollars worth of chemicals. While scientifically true, that description hardly exhausts the topic. The Psalmist's explanation comes much closer. "O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor" (Psalm 8:1, 4-5 NRSV).
In addition to differing on their approach to discerning truth, religion and science differ in their fields of interest. While both are interested in truth, science is more inclined to ask, "What is this?" Religion, on the other hand, is more concerned with "What does this mean?" Frankly, trying to make sense out of life with scientific data alone can lead to the despairing conclusion drawn by Richard Dawkins. He laments that the universe is a place of no real values, "but simply callous -- indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose."2 I submit the problem is not that scientifically speaking the universe lacks purpose. The problem is that the primary purpose of science is not to search for meaning. That is the realm of religion. Science can explain how atoms behave. It can describe how hydrogen and oxygen become water. Science can prove that penicillin kills bacteria. On the other hand, science doesn't deal effectively with issues of enduring human value: happiness, freedom, equality, and peace. Science deals well with things that can be measured mathematically. Its effectiveness, however, stops at the door of incalculable mystery. Science has little to say about God, self-worth, honesty, love, trust, and self-sacrifice. That is the arena for religious inquiry.
Do religion and science conflict? Yes, of course. They should conflict from time to time. They are two very different ways of knowing and they have two very different arenas of interest. That does not mean that one is good and the other is bad. It does not mean that we must choose one or the other. Both are to be valued, but they are not the same. In fact, a terrible disservice is done by those who want to make religion a science or science a religion. The Bible is a book of religious truth, not a book of science. Medicine is a science, not a religion. Don't demean scripture by trying to make it a textbook on paleontology, astronomy, cellular biology, or some other science. Don't worship the Journal of the American Medical Society as though it is Holy Writ. Science and religion have two very different ways to determine truth and they have two very different fields of study. Frankly, science makes a very poor religion and religion does science very poorly.
I realize some find this troubling. You wonder, "How can we live with two conflicting understandings of the world? Don't we have to iron out the differences?"
The answer is an emphatic, "Of course not!" God has given us a wonderful capacity to live with ambiguity. As human beings, we are indeed created in the image of God. At the same time, we are composed of ten to twenty dollars worth of chemicals. We can live with and keep straight those two different interpretations of what it means to be human. We can hold contradictory views simultaneously. This capacity for ambiguity is one of the most important characteristics of our humanness. We can think and be as scientific as we want. At the same time, we can be deeply religious people. We can do that because we have the capacity to grasp two very different understandings at the same time.
Having just stated that religion and science always conflict, let me now try to make the case that that might not always be true. There have been some significant advances in science and some different ways to think about God which bring these ancient opponents much closer. Since the time of Isaac Newton, science has assumed that the universe is a vast and complex machine programmed to operate by certain unchanging and unchangeable laws. With this model, the function of research was to discover and describe these rules by which everything operates. Confidence in the Laws of Newtonian Physics left little or no room for religious understandings of God, prayer, miracle, or anything else that might interrupt the fixed and determined movement of this universe. In this understanding, the heavens are cold and silent. They do not burst forth in song at the Glory of God.
More recently, however, science has discovered some things that don't fit with the physics of Newton. Quantum mechanics, chaos theory, and self-organizing theories are new fields in science that have discovered that the universe does not operate like a well-maintained clock. Particularly at the sub-atomic level, particles are just as likely to be influenced by fields and relationships as they are to behave according to immutable laws of cause and effect.
Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, two founders of quantum theory, write: "In the twentieth century, physicists faced for the first time a serious challenge to their ability to understand the universe. Every time they asked nature a question in an atomic experiment, nature answered with a paradox, and the more they tried to clarify the situation, the sharper the paradoxes became."3
As a layman reading about this new physics, I am struck by how much of the vocabulary sounds theological. Physicists are speaking of the importance of relationships in determining behaviors; of the constancy of change; of creative powers continually at work. Astronomer James Jeans went so far as to claim, "The universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine."4
From my perspective as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, when folks postulate the Great Thought, they are talking about God. Indeed, the worlds of science and religion are moving closer and closer together. In fact, a school of religious thinking called process theology refers to God as "The Great Soul of the Universe" and describes God as continuing influence in the world, as working with the world in relationship.
Process theology and new science offer the best opportunity yet for us to resolve this long-standing conflict between religion and science. How critical that is for the future. In recent years, scientific inquiry has touched on several issues that need critical religious reflection -- the human genome project with its implications for cloning, genetic engineering, the moral implications of nuclear weapons in space, the practical ethics of the information age, and the digital revolution.
Whether we continue to consider science and religion inevitably in conflict or find a way to reconcile them, I rejoice that we can be both modern scientific people and religious people. Thanks be to God for that.
____________
1. E. O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 1.
2. R. Dawkins, River Out of Eden (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), pp. 95-96.
3. Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture (New York: Bantam Books, 1983), p. 86.
4. Ibid., p. 86.
For Further Reflection And/Or Discussion
Is education inherently dangerous to faith development?
Can the Genesis accounts of creation be reconciled with science?
Does conflict between religion and science bother you?
Not many centuries ago there was not a choice. In the Middle Ages, theology was "Queen of the Sciences" and if the church said it was true, that is what you believed. In the seventeenth century, the Italian physicist, Galileo Galilei, claimed the earth revolved around the sun. He had looked through a telescope and that is what he saw. Today we know he was correct, but at the time the church taught that the sun revolved around the earth. It was reported that a theologian in the city of Padua kept his faith pure by refusing to look through Galileo's telescope lest he see what he was instructed not to believe. For his scientific contribution, Galileo was forced to make a public statement that he really did not believe what he had discovered. Church officials then kept him under house arrest for most of the remainder of his life. In an earlier century, scientific discovery adapted to religious teaching.
When they conflict today, it is more likely that religious teaching will be asked to accommodate scientific discovery. In fact, contemporary researchers can be as unsympathetic toward religion as medieval church leaders were toward Galileo. Evolution has been a battleground between science and religion for 150 years. Nobel Prize winner Edward Wilson illustrates the sharply drawn line. "Genetic chance," he insists, "and environmental necessity, not God, made the human species."1
In one sense, the lines of conflict between religion and science seem sharper and deeper and less likely to be traversed than ever. That is unfortunate because both science and religion are important. We should not be forced to choose. The reality is, however, that most people see them in conflict.
There are a couple simple reasons for this. Religion and science have different standards for deciding truth and they have different areas of interest. Let me explain briefly. First, science and religion frequently battle because they decide truth in very different ways. To use the word from Introduction to Philosophy, they have different epistemologies. Science decides fact with data gathered through the senses and verified by the observations of others. Religion agrees that knowledge emerges from reason and empirically-verified observations. However, religion also accepts things as true on the authority of scripture and the experiences of the community of believers.
The Bible illustrates nicely how these different methods for determining fact lead to conflict. After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to the disciples in the upper room. All were there, save one -- Thomas. When he returned, the other disciples were excited to tell him, "Jesus is not dead. He is alive. In fact, he came right into this room and stood over there. He is risen."
Thomas, the doubting disciple who exemplified a scientific approach to determining truth, did not share their excitement. He wanted to see and touch Jesus' wounds. As a modern, scientific representative at the resurrection, Thomas limited truth to empirical evidence confirmed by the senses.
A week later, Jesus returned to the upper room. This time, Thomas was present. The Master called Thomas toward him. "Put your finger here, and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side" (John 20:27). The disciple stepped forward and touched Jesus. "My Lord and my God," he confessed.
After the Master settled Thomas' demand for scientific evidence, he turned his attention to the religious way of knowing. Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe" (John 20:29).
Science and religion have two very different ways of determining the nature of things. Science limits itself to data gathered through the senses of sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing. Religion casts a wider net for truth. Science insists that "I must touch the wounds in his hands before I believe." Religion goes beyond that. "Blessed are those who believe even when they don't get to see and touch."
This scientific approach can, at times, be superior to a religious way of knowing. At the Temple of the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece, a burning gas jet was revered as a manifestation of some earth god. A few centuries ago, a man mining for salt struck a vein of gas and it exploded. The poor miner thought he had broken through to the bowels of hell itself. Thanks to science, we neither worship natural gas as a god nor fear it as a demon. We use it to heat our homes. We can thank scientific understanding for that.
At other times, our full humanness needs a fuller view of truth. I have watched the piano tuner working with an oscillating Stroboscope, tightening and loosening the strings so that each key of the properly tuned grand piano will resonate at exactly the correct number of vibrations. Having the piano in perfect tune, however, does not begin to explain the experience of hearing Chopin. Music needs a fuller understanding of truth.
As one whose early training was as a scientist, I am convinced that evolution does a good job explaining the paleontology and biology of human development. However, my experiences of what it means to be human go far beyond the sum of all the facts of science. Scientifically, human beings consist of ten to twenty dollars worth of chemicals. While scientifically true, that description hardly exhausts the topic. The Psalmist's explanation comes much closer. "O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor" (Psalm 8:1, 4-5 NRSV).
In addition to differing on their approach to discerning truth, religion and science differ in their fields of interest. While both are interested in truth, science is more inclined to ask, "What is this?" Religion, on the other hand, is more concerned with "What does this mean?" Frankly, trying to make sense out of life with scientific data alone can lead to the despairing conclusion drawn by Richard Dawkins. He laments that the universe is a place of no real values, "but simply callous -- indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose."2 I submit the problem is not that scientifically speaking the universe lacks purpose. The problem is that the primary purpose of science is not to search for meaning. That is the realm of religion. Science can explain how atoms behave. It can describe how hydrogen and oxygen become water. Science can prove that penicillin kills bacteria. On the other hand, science doesn't deal effectively with issues of enduring human value: happiness, freedom, equality, and peace. Science deals well with things that can be measured mathematically. Its effectiveness, however, stops at the door of incalculable mystery. Science has little to say about God, self-worth, honesty, love, trust, and self-sacrifice. That is the arena for religious inquiry.
Do religion and science conflict? Yes, of course. They should conflict from time to time. They are two very different ways of knowing and they have two very different arenas of interest. That does not mean that one is good and the other is bad. It does not mean that we must choose one or the other. Both are to be valued, but they are not the same. In fact, a terrible disservice is done by those who want to make religion a science or science a religion. The Bible is a book of religious truth, not a book of science. Medicine is a science, not a religion. Don't demean scripture by trying to make it a textbook on paleontology, astronomy, cellular biology, or some other science. Don't worship the Journal of the American Medical Society as though it is Holy Writ. Science and religion have two very different ways to determine truth and they have two very different fields of study. Frankly, science makes a very poor religion and religion does science very poorly.
I realize some find this troubling. You wonder, "How can we live with two conflicting understandings of the world? Don't we have to iron out the differences?"
The answer is an emphatic, "Of course not!" God has given us a wonderful capacity to live with ambiguity. As human beings, we are indeed created in the image of God. At the same time, we are composed of ten to twenty dollars worth of chemicals. We can live with and keep straight those two different interpretations of what it means to be human. We can hold contradictory views simultaneously. This capacity for ambiguity is one of the most important characteristics of our humanness. We can think and be as scientific as we want. At the same time, we can be deeply religious people. We can do that because we have the capacity to grasp two very different understandings at the same time.
Having just stated that religion and science always conflict, let me now try to make the case that that might not always be true. There have been some significant advances in science and some different ways to think about God which bring these ancient opponents much closer. Since the time of Isaac Newton, science has assumed that the universe is a vast and complex machine programmed to operate by certain unchanging and unchangeable laws. With this model, the function of research was to discover and describe these rules by which everything operates. Confidence in the Laws of Newtonian Physics left little or no room for religious understandings of God, prayer, miracle, or anything else that might interrupt the fixed and determined movement of this universe. In this understanding, the heavens are cold and silent. They do not burst forth in song at the Glory of God.
More recently, however, science has discovered some things that don't fit with the physics of Newton. Quantum mechanics, chaos theory, and self-organizing theories are new fields in science that have discovered that the universe does not operate like a well-maintained clock. Particularly at the sub-atomic level, particles are just as likely to be influenced by fields and relationships as they are to behave according to immutable laws of cause and effect.
Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, two founders of quantum theory, write: "In the twentieth century, physicists faced for the first time a serious challenge to their ability to understand the universe. Every time they asked nature a question in an atomic experiment, nature answered with a paradox, and the more they tried to clarify the situation, the sharper the paradoxes became."3
As a layman reading about this new physics, I am struck by how much of the vocabulary sounds theological. Physicists are speaking of the importance of relationships in determining behaviors; of the constancy of change; of creative powers continually at work. Astronomer James Jeans went so far as to claim, "The universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine."4
From my perspective as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, when folks postulate the Great Thought, they are talking about God. Indeed, the worlds of science and religion are moving closer and closer together. In fact, a school of religious thinking called process theology refers to God as "The Great Soul of the Universe" and describes God as continuing influence in the world, as working with the world in relationship.
Process theology and new science offer the best opportunity yet for us to resolve this long-standing conflict between religion and science. How critical that is for the future. In recent years, scientific inquiry has touched on several issues that need critical religious reflection -- the human genome project with its implications for cloning, genetic engineering, the moral implications of nuclear weapons in space, the practical ethics of the information age, and the digital revolution.
Whether we continue to consider science and religion inevitably in conflict or find a way to reconcile them, I rejoice that we can be both modern scientific people and religious people. Thanks be to God for that.
____________
1. E. O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 1.
2. R. Dawkins, River Out of Eden (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), pp. 95-96.
3. Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture (New York: Bantam Books, 1983), p. 86.
4. Ibid., p. 86.
For Further Reflection And/Or Discussion
Is education inherently dangerous to faith development?
Can the Genesis accounts of creation be reconciled with science?
Does conflict between religion and science bother you?
