We've Got Options

Many creationists seem to want us to choose faith or science.

Actually, these are not the two only options.

Creationists would have us believe that life is unlikely and rare. Is this true? It may be that life is in some sense inevitable, given the universe we live in. It may not be that the exact life as we know it was inevitable (rewind the tape, and perhaps something different would evolve), but some sort of life may be inevitable, all the same. Creationists seem to want this to be impossible - God had to have created a universe that does not work, except God's hand keeps spinning it up - what if he is a better craftsman than that?

And of course, the possibility exists that God used the natural process science discovers to accomplish his purposes. In which case, no conflict. Or that there is some other set of factors involved that we have yet to discover that accounts for the world we experience.

There is no reason to choose between the horns of the creationist dilemma. They seem to want this to be a faith choice – choose between the purposeful creation of God, or the meaningless, random acts of blind nature – it is a false dichotomy.

Science does not ask you to make a choice. Rather, it asks you to accept that there are physical laws and natural processes that account for the world you see around you. That this is true is obvious on the face of it, and the technology that has sprung from scientific discovery demonstrates this fact.

It does not say anything about what the world means, or for whom it was made, or what its ultimate purpose is. Creationists would have us believe that this is a fault - science is lacking because it is not religion, recapitulating the Bible. True, science is not religion - but it is not a fault (after all, that is what religion is for!).

You do not have to choose between Science and faith, and you should not choose fantasy over reality, just because you’ve been told your faith requires it (faith does not).

A False Controversy

We are being driven into a false conflict between faith and religion, simply because some people want to insist that the Bible is science. This is both harmful and wrong.

1. It is no more improbable that God made a universe where His will could be expressed thorough evolution and other natural causes than that he created a universe where all the hard parts have to be done through supernatural intervention (i.e. creationism).

2. Science no more promotes an ideology of materialism than does any other way of explaining how the world works – it is simply describing what is, and how what is works. No evidence for design has been found, and no observation of design in progress has ever been observed. This is not the case for various natural causes, which abound in every field, and can be observed whenever you bake a cake or drive your car (or for that matter, eat your breakfast or blink your eyes).

3. To insist that public school science class consider non-material causes introduces philosophy and religion into science class. Science is not improved in the process. A further danger is that there are many, many competing philosophies and religions – shall they take turns in science class? Shall they be voted in by the local religious majority at the time?

4. Scientists can study the idea of supernatural design anytime they want. There are hundreds, if not thousands of privately-funded research institutions. There has never been a barrier to such research, and in fact there have been Christian creationist research organizations founded. They simply have not been able to demonstrate the creationist hypothesis.

All this furor over creationism only serves to alienate many Christians from the discoveries of science, and create the false notion that you have to choose between thee Bible and the discoveries of science. It is time for more Christians to be willing to think, rather than just take the word of their youth leader, pastor or radio preacher.

Beyond Faith and Science

While science cannot answer questions about the existence of God, it can answer questions about the impact of God on the natural world.

Several scientific studies have concluded that so far, that impact has not been detectable. Surely this a significant and unexpected mystery. Why is God’s impact on the world not measurable – if not in a specific instance, in aggregate (for example, in hundreds of patients in a hospital, or in the life outcomes of the British royal family).

This lack of tangible effect has led some to suggest that if God exists, then s/he has no effect on the natural world. Others affirm that God does make a difference in the natural world (beyond the inner state of the believer), just not one that can be studied scientifically. It is not clear what this statement might mean

I think that this boundary is one of the important frontiers of religious thought. Some centuries ago, there would have been overwhelming certainty that God was a potent force in the world. Yet everywhere that science has looked, that potency has receded in the presence of testable laws governing the workings of the natural world. Is this a failure of science? Of perspective? Does this tell us something about God, or ourselves?

If religion is going to play a role among modern, technological, scientifically literate people, these questions are going to have to be raised and, if not answered, at least wrestled with.

Ultimate Truth From Science?

Brian Greene (author of “The Elegant Universe”) was in town recently to give a science lecture. During the lecture, he noted that Newton’s equations describing gravity have been experimentally verified and are still used today, but are in some instances wrong. Special Relativity either agrees with Newton or more accurately describes what happens, and corrects the idea that the effect of gravity exceeds the speed of light. Quantum Mechanics describes the effects of gravity at the level of the very small, but is in conflict with Special Relativity. We tend to think either QM or SR is right, and the other wrong. The Superstring theory he champions suggests that they are both right, but must be understood in the context of extra dimensions to account for their differences.

There are critics of string theory, and it may be that there is some other explanation that will account for the differences - or that we will never figure it out. The point is that we continue to make better and better sense of the world we see around us. Since I am not trying to make a religion of science - I don't need science to be true in some sort of ultimate sense - I am looking for it to be an accurate tool for understanding the natural world.

The reason that I continue to return to certain central themes is because the "science is provisional" argument is regularly employed to imply that may one day become the perspective of science. I am offering the counter-argument that science for the most part builds on what we know. There is no reason to expect, for example, that the TOE will alter the interpretation of known facts that will lead to a conclusion that the earth is 6,000 years old .

I see the concerted efforts of conservative Christians to mislead their constituents into believing that science is lying to them, misleading their constituents into believing that there is now (or is every likely to be) evidence that the earth is young, evolution did not happen, or that we are NOT all descended from common ancestors is a direct threat to the health and well-being of the human race. It threatens to return us to superstition and ignorance, at a time when we face unprecedented challenges that require us to think about the world in clear-eyed and accurate ways.

The difficulty with the objections to the provisional nature of science is that they also apply to whatever it is that the objectors believe. We have no access to ultimate truth, except by faith. You can’t know that your confidence in a revelation, scripture or the inner workings of your own mind are getting you any closer to ultimate truth than does science. So whatever fault you find with methodological naturalism (or philosophical naturalism) is just as true of whatever you replace it with. The one advantage that science has over faith is that science can demonstrate its conclusions. As a result, in the limited arena in which science operates, we can actually have broader agreement that it reflects truth than any faith - because faith is a subjective experience, and varies widely from time-to-time and culture-to-culture.

For example, compare the Genesis 1 account of creation with the Pythagorean Theorem. Rabbis, early church leaders and various modern-day theologians have a wide variety of approaches to what Genesis 1 means. On the other hand, the Pythagorean Theorem remains clear, unambiguous and universally affirmed to this day. None of the discoveries of science threaten it, and there is no reason to expect anything different in the future, the provisional nature of science not withstanding. Do you (or anyone else) know the Ultimate Truth with respect to Genesis 1? Maybe. But we have no way of verifying who that group or individual might be. Can you independently verify the Pythagorean Theorem? Yes.

So faith and science are very different, and in its realm, science is a reliable guide to knowledge about the world.

Darwin Sunday

So it turns out that the number of atheists in science is only some 40%, according to a recent survey. 45% support some sort of theism. What is realy interesting about these numbers is that they have not changed appreciably in the last 90 years.

Science does ignore the supernatural - both because it has not so far been needed to explain the natural processes we see around us (lucky for technological advances) and because there is no way to setup a controlled experiment to deal with the supernatural.

Experiments that have been setup to detect the impact of the supernatural (the effect of prayer, for example), have been universally inconclusive - (that is, no effect demonstrated for prayer).

And yet, some people still insist that there is some sort of unfairness in this. Are scientists supposed to not admit these truths?

Creationists regularly lie, misrepresent and distort the facts in order to make their case. This does nothing to commend themselves to the scientific community. And you'll have to admit that it is a pretty strange thing to see those representing the God of Truth lying, while scientists of all faiths (and none) fight to debunk the lies.

While some theists are quick to seize on any scientific discovery that takes their fancy as proof of God, when scientists advance a claim that does not support theism, these same theists are quick to claim foul, and say that these scientists have gone beyond science.

It is past time for folks to grow up and face the facts - the universe is old, we are descended from common ancestors, evolution happens, and all of us are free to draw what conclusions we will from the evidence of science.

Interpreting the Bible in Light of Our Understanding of the World

I have argued before that we should let our growing understanding of the world impact our theology. I'd like to explain what I mean by this. We have always used analogies from the natural world when we try to apprehend God. At the very least, our language is firmly rooted in our understanding of the world (exceptions like "sunrise," springing from a previous cosmology, serve to prove the rule). As we better understand our universe, it is inevitable that we struggle to reconcile the Bible with our day-to-day perceptions of the natural world. When we deal with revelation that claims to disclose information about the natural world, we treat some of that revelation as metaphor, and some as fact - based in part on our knowledge of how things work.

As we learn more about the natural world, we either have to rethink what parts of revelation are fact and what parts metaphor, or risk having the entire revelation rejected as untrustworthy. This is a normal course of events when we reach new scientific insights. For example, Martin Luther (one of the founders of the Protestant movement in the Christian faith), thought that the earth was the center of the universe, based on the then-universal way of interpreting the Bible. This biblical teaching has now been reclassified from fact to historical artifact, and no branch of the Christian faith takes the geocentrism of the Bible "literally," in spite of its impeccable pedigree.

With relentless regularity, science presents us with a better grasp of the natural world, in turn causing us to look at teachings in the Bible and ask, "fact or metaphor?" Some attempt a contrarian position, and argue that the discoveries of science are in error, or even misleading. Some give up, and stop questioning the religious texts, assuming they have nothing to offer, having been wrong about the simple things like cosmology and evolution. Most of us simply suspend judgement, and postpone asking the hard questions.

Still, many folks seem to have a sense of "Other." They are unwilling to inhabit a world of pure physics, chemistry and biology. They sense a pattern in the fabric of their lives not accounted for by the products of science. They experience an intimation of something beyond the mundane world, and find a shared experience with communities of faith spread over the globe and through time.

There are discoveries of science that bolster confidence that there may well be "something more." The sheer overwhelming complexity of life is one such discovery. No simple mechanisms end up accounting for life; each discovery of the "fundamental" building blocks of life seem to give way to yet another, even more fundamental layer (or field or emergent property). Others look at the highly-tuned constants that make life possible, others the shared experience of synchonicities, of meaningful "accidents," others at the very fact of all this order in the midst of such a vast, empty universe. Or perhaps it is more personal for some - a sense of being known by Another, of touching the Divine - a wholly personal lens through which the rest of life is filtered.

Faith cannot yet justify itself to the satisfaction of science. This is in itself a bit perplexing, because, we tend to think, if it cannot be studied scientifically, we are uncomfortable believing it is "real." It is also perplexing because many faiths posit an interventionist God - one who does in fact change things in the natural world, and in ways that should be measurable. And yet, so far, the only measurements are in terms of personal experience - not the conclusions of scientific experiments. It is also perplexing because faith finds itself ceding ground to science, and never the other way around. When the Bible and Galileo came to blows over the position of the earth relative to the sun, it was the interpretation of the Bible that changed, not earth's place in the cosmos.

So I am arguing that we treat science as an extension of our senses and our intellect - and that we use our understanding of the natural world to help us intepret the Bible. God does not ask us to ignore the evidence in front of us when we think about God. We are invited to "Taste and see that the LORD is good" (Psalm 34:8) - to use the evidence of our senses to understand God's goodness. If we believe that God is the driving force behind the Bible, then we also believe that s/he knew the earth circled the sun when he inspired the texts that speak of the earth standing still and the sun moving across the sky. We assume that s/he knew that the earth was billions of years old when he inspired the story of 6 days of creation some 6,000 years ago. We assume s/he understood the intricate web of common descent when s/he spoke of the special creation of the various "kinds." If this is true, then we don't need to fear that we will distort God's message - we could even form, as a working assumption, that God uses the cultural assumptions of the day when discussing the world and how it works - that is, these are shared assumptions that are used to fuel analogies of spiritual matters, not attempts to teach about the natural world. Rather than insist that these views are accurate, we should focus on what message was being taught about God and how we should respond to that teaching.

More on the Future of Theology

Faith and science are two approaches to understanding how the world works and our place in it. Religion starts from the premise that this information is essentially unknowable (so we have to be told). Science springs from the notion that we can figure it out. It turns out that faith has not done such a good job of explaining how the world works, and science is able to explain the “how,” but is so far silent on the “why” and “so what.”

It is easy to think that religion is the search for meaning, for transcendence – but I think that removes it from the original context of profound ignorance of the way that the natural world worked. I wonder if religion was much more like science to folks who struggled to survive though millennia when the natural world was an impenetrable veil. Religion filled in the “how” questions with spiritual beings, accounts of struggles between rival forces, and natural events synched to how well we obeyed the dictates of the gods. And yes, sometimes transcendence – the notion that there has to be something more than this brief life.

Nowadays, the transcendence part is what is left to religion – though billions still think that their lives are shaped by spiritual forces, and that many (most?) of the events of their lives are somehow influenced by how closely they adhere to the tenants of their faith.

This is in sharp contradistinction to modern science, which paints a picture of natural forces that so far leave no room for manipulation by God or gods. History and sociology answer for the rise and fall of peoples, nations and communities. Psychology, economics, family dynamics and heredity account for personality, and double-blind scientific trials look in vain for a demonstration of the power of prayer – or for that mater, any “spiritual” power.

And yet it is remarkable that we are here – apparently alone at the bottom of a gravity well in what is essentially an empty universe. We find ourselves bound to a spec of dirt, surrounded by light-years of space, inimical to life. We find ourselves the only self-aware beings in this universe. Who are we, that we should end up here, alone and without really understanding how we got here or where we are going?

And we treat each other so poorly – we commit genocide, engage in religious and civil wars, enslave each other, bully and exploit each other, we even find it hard to treat our friends and family with respect and honor for any length of time.

Science seems to suggest that this is what we should expect, given our history. Science seems to suggest that we probably are not alone, but we may be beyond reach of any other life (and so functionally alone). Science seems to suggest that if there is a God or gods, He or She makes no measurable impact in the natural world.

Still, billions of people do think that there is a transcendent part of us. Some part that endures past this life, some part that is tarnished or enhanced by how we live here – and so there is a reason to live up to a set of standards, even if it has little or no payback in this life. We find the idea that some part of us endures worth struggling for, and we find that a faith community keeps us pointed in the right direction.

Religion is in a time of transformation never before experienced. There have been clashes of religion, and conversions from one faith to another – but now we face a time when the very voice of faith is being questioned. Religion used to explain how the natural world functioned – but no longer. Religion used to explain how communities and people should interact – but its authority in this area has been severely eroded – we now feel it important to modify what religion teaches in light of what we have come to know about how people are made.

For example, just 500 years ago in Europe, the Bible would have been seen as the authoritative source for cosmology, geology, the origin of plants and animals, history, ethnography, sociology, psychology; predictive of future history, and descriptive of the future of the earth, nations and your and my soul. Now, at best, it speaks of personal morality (greatly circumscribed by advances in our understanding of biology, sociology and psychology) and a future that has been recast from concrete description of an imminent fate to figurative language largely suggestive of possible outcomes.

So religion is left to speak to us about immaterial things, future things, states only dimly grasped, and then only in imagination. Our exposure to other sects, faiths, cultures, histories have made it difficult to imagine that only we have truth – and on top of this we find we have no objective way to choose between your view of truth and my view of truth.

All the same, religion seems to be alive and well. We treat texts as rich sources of advise on how to live, how to treat one another, and how to shape our mind and character. Religion forms the basis for bedrock identities, and for identifying communities, compatible world-views and political and social agenda. Far more people consider themselves religious that not, and far more people think God exists that think He or She does not.

Is this just a brief flourish of growth before some massive die-back, or does it reflect that a faith position is worked into the human psyche at such a deep level that it will survive the transition from arbiter-of-all-truth to suggester-of-a-life-beyond-our-grasp?

I think faith will survive, because faith is recognition of an ultimate meaning. Most of us seek to understand patterns – it is one of the ways we deal with complexity and the rush of input. We sort, we categorize, retain the significant, dismiss the unimportant. For many of us, faith is what emerges when we sort the “big-picture” category. We experience connection, causality between our actions and how life goes for us, mysterious connections and synchronicities with other people and events that convince us that there is in fact a pattern just beyond our grasp. Often, we find a religion that articulates that pattern in a way that makes sense to us, and we take it on as our own grid by which we orient ourselves to our life, our times and eternity. When that happens, we become a person of faith - something I don't think will stop happening any time soon.