It’s not a topic I touch on often, mostly because I can’t be bothered with all the fanatics — of all persuasions — it tends to bring out of the woodwork. I nonetheless decided to republish a reply I made (still caught in the moderation queue) to a Science vs. God thread over at Time Magazine (which is sporting a swanky new design, I like it!).
Basically the question posed was:
Can the disconnect between science and religion be bridged?
Another more pertinent question, in my mind, is: “Should it be bridged?”
I’m a raving atheist. I have never seen, heard, felt or otherwise experienced anything that points to a god-like being in any shape or form. What my life has taught me however, is that the world is driven by systems. Mathematics, physics and so on.
What continually amazes me, is religious people’s lack of acceptance towards the fact that the human body is fallible. Ironic, considering God’s exclusive title as ‘infallible’. Yet we’ve all ‘felt’ creatures under our bed, seen someone move out the corner of our eye and heard footsteps in a dark forest.
Our brain is constantly trying to predict the world; that’s how it works (read the excellent On Intelligence) Why is it so hard to believe that the same process which predicts a path between the dropping of a rock and it hitting the ground, even if you don’t actually see or hear it, is the same process which tries to bridge other, perhaps more abstract events, by inserting ‘God’?
Most religions have set themselves up well (that’s why they are still around, while other similar, perhaps more poorly ‘constructed’ religions are not), but if we turn them on their heads, they suddenly make so much more sense.
God created man in his image… Well, let’s try it the other way around. What if man created God in his image and added human-like behavior (God moves in mysterious ways, just like humans). Suddenly we can identify with and (generally) understand the behavior of this divine entity. Suddenly the universe didn’t spring into being by itself, it was created. Creation. It’s something we humans can relate to. We do it every day.
Suddenly we have a magic, easy to comprehend ‘substance’ that can be used to bridge pretty much any two points in our world view. Don’t know how gravity works? God will’s it. Don’t understand why you keep smoking cigarettes, when you want to quit? God is testing you. You mother was diagnosed with cancer? God has his reasons, do not question them.
We can identify a sovereign authoritative being — we are surrounded with them in our lives — so it’s easy to comprehend for anyone, anywhere that God is behind these things.
Back in what I like to call ‘the real world’, the technical workings of gravity are a bit harder to understand. As is addiction and cancer. And furthermore, they are distant and inhuman. While their effects are clear enough to us, their causes are not available to the human senses. You can see the effect of gravity, it keeps you grounded. But you can’t see why the Earth beneath you keeps you down, but the moon doesn’t…
We can’t visualize the complex mechanics behind gravity, but we can easily understand the ‘magic hand’ of God, keeping everything in place.
After all, that’s how we view the world as children, where our parents were benevolent, caring, invulnerable, perfect beings capable of just about anything.
The question is: Can science and religion be bridged? Should they?
If religion sees something unknown, it’s ‘God wills it!’ and ‘It’s an act of God!’
Science tries to pull back the cover and see the world for what it is. Mind you, not how we perceive it, but how it is. When science sees something unknown, it is unknown.
In my humble opinion, religion and science need to be kept absolutely segregated, for just that reason.
Religion hasn’t granted us the electricity, computers, the internet, space travel, ski wax, synthetic food, water filters and whatever else you think of.
In fact, religion has granted us little more than churches, docility and the meddling of religous people in the affairs of the world.
If God should exist, it seems to me that he, she or it would be just as happy with people practicing their beliefs outside of opulent churches and priests bellowing out ‘the word’.
But then people couldn’t get the same sense of ‘together-we-stand’-edness. Yet another human trait.
How about that?
A perhaps more worrying question is why religion and state are intermingled in so many countries, including my own? For how long must we drag around the shackled of the past? How can personal religion, or the absence of such, be a free choice in a country which chooses to sport a state-religion? How can a forward-thinking country like Denmark, in which a mere 4.1% (source) of its population is actively church-going, look itself in the eyes?
Luckily it doesn’t seem to bear as much weight in our neck of the woods as it does in the US, where Bush seems to confer with God as much as he does his aides.
What’s so grotesque, is that in my eyes he’s actually taking advice from that magic ‘goo’ that connects the unknown space in between two separate points in his world view.
And that scares the shit out of me.
PS: The comments on this entry will be heavily moderated, to save it from drowning in a sea of stupidity.
[quote post=“2513”]What if man created God in his image and added human-like behavior (God moves in mysterious ways, just like humans).[/quote]
Mike, that is essentially my feeling on this subject as well. I would also classify myself as an atheist without the clear thought process to write such a well thought-out post. However, I agree with all your points whole-heartedly.
Humans seem to need something higher than themselves to believe in, to relegate blame to and to seek council from. I grow very irritated when people either place blame on God for the shortcomings in their lives or praise God for all that has gone well.
I believe in pure chance and co-incidence. If you stop for a moment and try to imagine WHY something that has happened, did happen..you will find that chance has a bigger role to play in it than God ever would have.
However, I’m perfectly fine with some choosing to involve religion in their lives if it makes them a better person, if it allows them to live a fulfilling life, but I’m opposed using religion has an excuse for foreign policy, for unnecessary blood shed around the world..
How can something that was invented to be calming, docile and protective of the human species be used to cause such harm is just unfathomable..
Regards
we already know that God does not exists… but peanut butter, can always be that “extraordinary evidence” people need
i really think that if someone believes in a “God” it’s ok, but that his choice is really his… i mean, without pressure from his surrounding, country, church, etc…
i also think that science and religion don’t mix, they don’t even are in the same alley… time ago we where the center of the universe… now we are little worms panicking…
and as Galileo sed e pur si muove!
How could your comment to the Time blurb still be in moderation with some of the “How dare you criticize… I will mock you…” comments passing moderation?
I think that you have explained yourself very well, although I think that there has been some extreme simplification for the sake of your argument (which simplification I do see as justified here). From my point of view, I can bridge science and religion for myself, using the “definitions” you provided as how each side views an “unknown.” As background, I am finishing a Ph. D. in Plant Pathology and also faithfully attend and participate in a religious organization. The hard sciences (including physics, chemistry, biology) have provided wonderful answers to tough questions. They haven’t answered every question, though. One might be why I was born into a middle class family and not into a poorer family. I could say, “God’s will,” but the end result is still the same. I don’t know. There isn’t any way for me to use the scientific method to determine the answer. It’s simply unknown. Yet in the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it’s important for me to know. I certainly can’t go back and change things. I have to live my life looking towards the future, trying to make life better for future generations.
I thank you for posting on a topic that can invoke very strong reactions. It has made me think harder about my world view and those of others. To answer your questions, I think science and religion can be bridged, and I think they probably should. And by bridged, I mean not relying on one to provide all the answers. I think there is even a way to bridge them to make everybody happy, though I don’t have an inkling of an idea how that would happen. I think, though, that they cannot and should not be bridged until people can sit down and have meaningful discussions and truly listen to each side. So in other words, they probably won’t ever be bridged (but I’d be happy to be wrong about that).
Nice post, but another more pertinent question in my mind is: “is there a disconnect in the first place?” I’m an atheist if there ever was one, but I like to play the devil’s advocate now and then.
Take Creation and the Big Bang: they match perfectly. One moment there is nothing, the next there is everything. Mind you, the bing bang theory comes from (somebody inside) the Vatican, only the mathematical and empirical proof from Einstein and Hubble.
Sure, the bible (or the Koran) is so ambiguous it’s rediculous. But religion is as often abused by the man-in-the-street as is science, only we tend to pay more attention to the former than to the latter. As popular among scientists as it is, ‘abuse by pseudo-practicioners’ is a poor criterium to distinguish the two.
So, try comparing science with theology. The only difference I can tell is that theologians stop at the Big Bang, while atheists continue questioning what happened before that. Science and religion have always gone hand in hand and wether you believe God created a natural law or not is irrelevant for your practice.
Only the Catholic (not the protestant) church is an institutionalized, distinct religion; everywhere else science, religion and state overlap — like in the US (although Americans don’t like admitting it). So remember that Catholic Europe is the anomaly (and only since the ’60s), not the rest of the world. I think it is better to ask ourselves why we think there is a gap between science and religion, than to ask how we can bridge it.
Human kind has always needed something to describe magical events.
God, like most things of a religious nature is a construct – and that construct can be used to “explain” everything.
I’m not an atheist – I simply have an open mind.. and that mind tells me that the ‘God’ referred to by Christianity and by the Muslim faith are human constructs.
Does that mean there is/ are “smarter” beings in the universe? probably – does that mean that being takes a daily interest in what we ‘ants’ do? I think not.
Amazing. Either you are spending a lot of time weeding out comments, your you have the most civilized audience in the blogosphere. Now regarding the questions at hand.
Can science and religion be bridged? Should they?
I think Arjan’s answer is very helpful. It approaches the question from the present culture context.
The world is not a clean slate. Science and religion are not two separate elements that have never been blended. They are intertwined, and have been for a long time because human culture is not a tidy vacuum. All our endeavors blend as a result of our humanity. Often times that blending into wolrdviews, that generates culture, enables new discoveries and truth. Unfortunately it frequently blinds us to truth as well.
A better pursuit than bridging what is already blended would be to pursue respect. Science has obvious strengths and provides many answers through its system of investigation. But it does leave unknowns. Theology can provide a system for understanding some of those unknowns but will fail to answer questions Science can easily address.
There is huge swaths of human experience that both Science and Theology fail to answer. And the pursuit of understanding the gap in between is what makes life worth living. Unfortunately, in the pursuit of answers, humans can become over-passionate, over-extending Science or Theology and mutilating each other in the process. Science is abused to produce simple answers where their may not be any. Science becomes superstition (“This theory is unarguably true.”). Theology suffers the same fate, abuse in search of simple answers. Theology becomes superstition (“This ritual is unarguably true.”).
I think we all have tendencies to pick Science or Theology and then oversimplify, failing to honor the value and insight the other has to offer. But sometimes we do the opposite, muddling psuedo-science and psuedo-theology in search of difficult answers when we may just not be equipped to understand them much less find them.
Certain political leaders tend to disrespect science, asserting preferences for theological explanations, and proceed to over-extend theology, twisting it into either superstition or dogmatic religious fervor. The passion of their humanity overwhelms their rational abilities.
Scientists can and do make the same mistake. They pursue the mysteries to a fault, demanding nature produce an answer for things it may not offer answers for. Nature fails to give the answer in terms we like and so we bend a theory to explain it. Eventually a more observant scientist comes along with a better perspective and sees the better explanation or possibly even a better question. But their have been many scientific atrocities where passion overwhelmed a scientist humanity.
Can science and religion separated? No. Humans will always be a muddled mess no matter how purely rational or faithful we try to be. Every human has beliefs that fall in both fields.
As a person that believes in God, Science holds many answers, and deserves a lot of respect. And when it does not have answer, I do not fault it. On the flip side, I try not to expect Theology to answer questions it does not address. Most of all I try to keep in mind that I am fallible and so are all the other humans around me. Proceed with an open-mind, patience and extend a lot of grace.
Thanks for inviting this conversation. I have enjoyed reading the other perspectives.
Unfortunately people try to be smart with their religion like they know everything about it, so they say things like “God had a reason” or “God’s testing you” etc. I believe in God, but I don’t think he micromanages. In other words, people who worship God really don’t know crap about him other than what the Bible may or may not tell us.
Science and Religion should be separate, because you know what? Both of them just slow the other down. Scientific conflicts make science progress slower and make religious people forget what they’re supposed to be doing, worshiping God not making everyone else do the right thing when they themselves can not. If you think about it, more accurate science helps prove a religion. If people don’t think so, then they obviously doubt their religion. The better science we have the better we can understand the things that we are told by religion. For example, just because someone did something magical in 55AD doesn’t mean it was supernatural, maybe they just had better technology. There, now we can understand how it happened.
And, on another note, religion did give us many things. It inspired the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, the Egyptians, the American Settlers, and the Mayans/Aztecs/Incas, etc to do great things. Religion inspired the Parthenon, the Pyramids, the Olympics, central-American pyramids, and the founding of the United States to name a few. (The reason the Americans left Britain was to be free to practice their own religion, something the king did not permit).
I’m going to agree with Arjan. Both science and theology are attempts at understanding everything around us.
Interestingly enough, I’ve found that the same arguments that are used to disprove God can also prove God, and vice versa.
No matter what it is you believe, however, it is obvious that both science and theology are important. In that case, I don’t believe you can make a case for one or the other, but if you are to seek understanding, you must embrace both. The idea that the two are mutually exclusive is ridiculous. In the same way that you mention politics and religion mixing, it is the same with science and theology. You mention gravity as outside of the understanding of theology, but Isaac Newton himself was just as interested in theology as physics. I pulled the following quote from Wikipedia on Newton; “I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.” Clearly the two are not at odds.
Where is the difference between one who decries science because his focus on theology confuses him on science and one who decries theology because his focus on science confuses him theology? Neither science or theology is more right or more wrong than the other, because they are both valid answers to the same questions.
Michael, I love this little blurb:
Science has yet to prove the existence of God. But science also has yet to prove the non-existence of God.
So my question is: why do you choose to be atheist instead of being agnostic?
Aren’t you just perceiving the non-existence of God like theists perceive the existence of God?
@ofg: I think Douglas Adams said it best – it’s all about the burden of proof:
I enjoyed reading this post and enjoyed the thought that you put into this topic. I think the question of whether science and religion can be bridged is an interesting one. I guess for me it depends on what you mean by bridged. I am a very religious person and I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Psychology. I think that it is difficult to build a firm bridge between science and religion because they are both moving targets. Scientific knowledge is always changing as we discover new things and conduct experiments in different ways. For me, religious knowledge is the same. My religious knowledge is constantly being modified and changed based on my experiences. I am not afraid to live with contradictions and am not troubled by the fact that these two parts of me don’t always match up. As a Psychologist I certainly resonate with your comments about why people are religious (such as the need to explain the unexplainable), but for me religion somehow goes beyond something that people made up to support their human needs. The only way that I can explain that is to say that I have had experiences and feelings that lead me to believe in a higher power. In my opinion, since you can’t prove that God does or does not exist based on the scientific method, we must rely on our personal feelings and experiences to make a decision about this issue and we must respect each other’s feelings about this.
Hi Michael,
I happen to be both a physicist and a Catholic, so this is a topic which I think about frequently. Your post makes a number of valid and interesting points. One thing I do take issue with, however, is the assertion:
It is easy, especially in this day in age, to see the damage that religion has caused (cf. the rise of fundamentalist Islam and terrorism, the religious right trying to prevent the teaching of evolution in American schools, Bush’s ban on federal funding for stem cell research… the list is pretty long). With all these things, it is hard to remember that religion does create a great deal of good as well. For instance, Martin Luther King Jr. was a preacher whose determination to stand up to civil rights abuses was largely inspired by his faith.
I completely agree that religion should never serve as an excuse to stop looking for answers. However, I don’t think that science and religion have to be mutually exclusive if each is restricted to the realm in which it applies. Science searches for material truths, religion searches for spiritual truths.
It is in this sense that I believe that science and religion can co-exist. But you are right, let’s not mix them.
[quote post=“2513”]In fact, religion has granted us little more than churches, docility and the meddling of religous people in the affairs of the world.[/quote]
I agree with Blake that this is a little-too-bold statement. The term ‘science’ was invented somewhere in the 17th or 18th century Europe; hence, all human progress before that came from ‘religion’. That includes both a lot of nasty stuff and a lot of good stuff — just like science has given us equal parts too.
Nevertheless, I do agree that church, religious aims and state should be kept at a safe distance from each other. But given a well-functioning democracy (unlike, say, most Islamic countries) I think there’s nothing wrong with religious morale in politics. It’s something you cannot and should not want to avoid.
I just found a quote by Albert Einstein that definitely has merit in this argument.
“Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”
I agree with you to a point, don’t think it was the best articulation in the world; pretty disorganized actually, but good thoughts nonetheless.
My take is simple, and sort of goes along with Einstein’s above:
Science seeks to explore and know the world around us and how it works.
Spirituality tries to explain why the heck we’re in it and what we should do with the time we have.
The two are completely separate (one being scientific, the other being philosophical) but entirely compatible — or even more, necessary to one another. Each balances and makes the other stronger. We can’t separate them completely without losing a sense of purpose for our science, and a sense of reality for our spirituality.
Yet, it’s only with both that we are fully human.
(_Note I say spirituality and not religion, though religion is a kind of spirituality, and indeed I think that’s most of what people desire from religion. It’s the Why we’re here, not the How we got here that’s more important to people these days, and science won’t ever answer the question Why, regardless of how much we know about How_).
So a quote, then— from Loren Eisely in his wonderful essay called “The Secret of Life‗ about some researchers trying to recreate life from the primordial ooze. Read this. It’s good.
“It is really a matter, I suppose, of the kind of questions one asks oneself. Some day we may be able to say with assurance, ‘We came from such and such a protein particle, possessing the powers of organizing in a manner leading under certain circumstances to that complex entity known as the cell, and from the cell, by various steps onward, to multiple cell formation.’ I mean we may be able to say all of this with great surety and elaboration of detail, but it is not the answer to the grasshopper’s leg, brown and black and saw-toothed here in my hand, nor the answer to the seeds still clinging tenaciously to my coat, nor to this field, nor to the subtle essences of memory, delight, and wistfulness moving among the thin wires of my brain.â€
We can know everything about how the world works, everything science seeks to answer, and there will still be unanswered questions, and we will still be human, and we may never know why.
I used to call myself an Atheist, but now I’m an Atheistic Agnostic. No God in the traditional sense, no, but I accept that I don’t know why I’m here. If some people want to call that “God” then that’s okay with me.