What We Need to Believe

Reading a review of Behe's new book God as Genetic Engineer, I am reminded that what creationists claim as true, and what even creationist proponents believe can be supported by the evidence are two different things.

For example, Behe accepts an old age for the earth, common ancestors for chimps and humans, and the ability of sequential mutations to increase an organism's chances for survival. He accepts these things, though they contradict biblical literalism, because the evidence is compelling.

Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, given a chance to clarify his views of evolution, backs away from a literal reading of Genesis, and says that faith and science are not in conflict - meaning that evolution happened, and that Genesis 1 is not to be taken literally.

What remains? A conviction, widely held, that "all this is not an accident." The notion that some way, some how, "God did it." This is not based on the Bible or science – it is a "gut feeling" that life is not just a series of random events – that we have a privileged place in the universe.

The difficulty, of course, is in getting down to specifics. It is clear that God did not do it as laid out in the Bible (or any other religious text). It is clear that God (as immediate cause) is not needed to explain any part of the world we live in (except to assert that in some as-yet-not-understood way, “God did it”).

Not only do we find no clear evidence of God acting in history or our day-to-day world, it is becoming increasingly clear that there is no known mechanism for supernatural action at all. The response of faith is, “well, obviously, science is wrong, because God does act.” That, and the other theistic response - that the things we discover about the natural world, including cosmology and evolution, is how God does it.

So how can smart people like Behe and Huckabee and Brownback live with this cognitive dissonance (claiming both that the all we can know about are material causes, and faith’s claims that all the important causes are supernatural)? They know (and even publicly admit) that the Bible does not accurately portray (when taken even semi-literally) the history and workings of the natural world. Yet they find themselves compelled by their belief to insist that God has taken a direct (though unspecified) role in shaping the natural world, the historical events in the world in the last few thousand years, and in the day-to-day events of their (and billions of others') lives.

Treat this like a large-scale survey about what people need and want in their lives. They want the world to make sense. They need there to be order and pattern and purpose. We experience the effects of this unmet need in the social chaos we see around us - people seeking any number of things (much self- and socially- destructive) to escape pointlessness and boredom, alienation and loneliness.

Science is often perceived as relentlessly eroding a sense of purpose and significance - at best silent, and at worse dismissive of the notion that we can have a special relationship with a supernatural force that impacts our world in a way that benefits our daily life, community and world history. Science earns this reputation by failing to find any evidence that claims of supernatural intervention have any basis in fact.

The implications are not lost on people of faith: absent supernatural intervention, we may not be a special people, and our leaders not appointed by the gods. This may not be not the promised land. The seasons and weather may not reflect supernatural approval or disapproval of our actions. Wealth may not be a sign of divine favor. Parking spaces may not be held open for us by the great valet in the sky. Worse, much of what happens may be as pointless, random and unfair as it seems. Meaning may be where we find it, and love may be where we make room for it.

Of course, this could all be taken as a wakeup call to grow up and take more responsibility for our lives, our relationships, our community and planet. Conversely, many people have tried and failed the attempt to be responsible and proactive, and have found themselves unable to cope with the despair, the open alternatives, the absence of any objective set of values or fixed compass by which to navigate. They turn to faith for certainty, for direction, even purpose.

So the reaction is often to blame the messenger - science. This is normal - especially since the expectations for science and technology are so great, and science and technology has proven such a mixed blessing. Still, the message, such as it is, is accurate.

Science cannot get us out of this mess, because it is not a religion, offers no path to meaning and purpose, and is not, in itself, a foundation for meaningful community.

People seem to need a sense of purpose, significance, and community. We seem to need a sense of our place, and a way to make a meaningful, lasting contribution. We want to be safe, and to be free from fear and want. We obviously to need to learn how to be social creatures, able to interact positively with others – and to do that, we need stable, helpful models. This takes enduring institutions and an extravagant investment of time and compassion. It takes a way of starting over, a way of being held accountable, a way of being forced to live within some limits.

The value of individuals, the right relationship between a government and the governed, an individuals obligations to their community (and vice versa)- these are all tightly bound up with people's moral, ethical and religious beliefs.

Science is not a replacement for faith or morals, but it often represents the only viable alternative to revelation or arbitrary claims of authority. It is can be an infuriating goad to arbitrary authority. Science can be stifling orthodoxy to folks who are trying to think in new ways. Because science makes no claim to infallibility, and yet is often viewed as the final arbiter of truth - (both claims have some merit), science is seen as both autocratic and fractious, authoritative, and as changeable as the next discovery or clinical trial.

The best way to defend science is to build healthy communities of people who, among other things, embrace science as a tool - neither making it an oracle, nor forcing it to be subservient to some other master (politics, capitalism, prejudice or religious dogma). Science is a critical tool exactly because it can help us discover accurate things about our world. When we silence science (as we have in the discussions of global warming, for political purposes, in our drug approval process, for economic motives, and so on) we all lose - because we have diminished our ability to distinguish claim from fact, and are more at the mercy of dogma and demagogues, wild speculation, ignorance and superstition.