Reconciling Science and Religion
I think that in this year when Charles Darwin will get a hunk of press for the dual celebrations of the bicentennial of his birth and the sesquicentennial of the first edition of his book, the question of the conflicts between science and religion will be discussed by a great many thinkers and writers, including me.
In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennet explained that while Darwin’s theory of natural selection was not completely original his approach to the question of the role of science in explaining origins was the beginning of referring to our origins without pulling in the need for a Creator. He was not original even to that, but he layed out a process that completely explains the diversity of all life with no appeal to the supernatural.
Dennet is correct in stating that there had now been a gauntlet laid at the feet of religion in 1859, which had heretofore rained supreme in explaining the existence of the human race. The prior assumption, untestable yet undefeatable had been that we were in fact a “special creation.”
And here is where the real conflict lies, I think. In early catechism I had been taught that God the Father had existed in eternity (with or without Logos, I am still unclear on this,) and created the universe because he was lonely for companionship and need us for our love and worship. Adam and Eve, having been given free will and a warning, sinned at their first opportunity naively thinking that they could have the same knowledge as God. In His anger, God declared that they would forever bear the burden of their sin unto all generations. He also cursed the animals, who had until this time never known death nor suffering. The lions had been laying peaceably with the lambs, the foxes with the rabbits and the parasites with the hosts. It was always win-win for the animals, if not for the plants.
Theistic evolution, at least as practiced and preached by Ken Miller, needs to have an interventionist God or else it sinks into the quandary of deism and pantheism. With deism and pantheism, there is no original sin and then from that there is no need for the grace of Jesus’ salvation. So, the way Miller understands God is as a tinkerer with evolution, a non-“Designer” who nevertheless placed careful modifications to evolution at the level of quantum mechanics so that evolution would still work and lead to the ascent of Man. We would, God knew, eventually arise to fill our ecological “niche.”
So this is good for Miller, but where does it leave the possibility for reconciliation between religion and science? It creates a new level of Creationism, in effect. While Miller, as a crack biologist would bristle at being lumped with Creationism, it is a shoe that fits even it is not a color of his choosing.
Miller carefully avoids all of the fallacies and faults of Intelligent Design, but at the end his finely-tuned universe and his interventionist evolution both point back to his God, the Inventor.
So, I honestly think that there is a quandary for practicing scientists in evolutionary biology who are also religious (whether Christian or some other religion.)
The inspiration for Darwin’s theory of natural selection is largely based on Darwin’s reading of Malthus’ discussion of economics and scarcity. There is only room for so much life. Those forms of life which successfully proceed to the next generations succeed long enough to face extinction, in the meantime branching out into populations with common ancestors who may or may not survive.
Natural selection depends on extinction, starvation and suffering. It is an unpleasant fact. New species can’t move in if the old ones don’t “move out.” And so nature has ways of dealing with overpopulation; hunger, the need to replicate and the need to survive better than your competitors for the limited resources.
All of this was taking place long before man, and long before Man could have committed the First Sin for which we all need redemption. The 19th-century scientists who realized this argued that the fossils they were finding represented a separate epoch of Creation, and that it wasn’t until 6000 years ago that God embarked on his final creation; the one that included Us.
With the concept of Theistic Evolution, one would need to accept that the tender, minute touches of intervention are placed by the same being who saw the need to create a cruel world. It is a world of beauty, yes, but perhaps beauty is all the more precious to us because we know that in large part we will all die and so will all of our fellow life.
This solves one of Epicurus’ riddles, doesn’t it?
“Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?”
There is, for the theistic evolutionist, evil in the world because life demands it. Augustine answered to Epicurus by saying that Epicurus had ignored the benefits of suffering in the world. Indeed, Augustine’s answer is crucial to Catholic theology; it is the idea that one must die in some symbolic way (perhaps to materialism,) in order to be “reborn in Christ.” That’s not the precise wording of Augustine, but it was the thrust of several of the youth “Teens Encounter Christ” retreats I joined when I was in my teens. It’s also illustrative of the myth of Jesus’ death and reincarnation. He died to give us the chance for new life in him. Rather than dying cruelly to be reborn, we only need to accept his sacrifice; like the grain of wheat that must “die” and be buried in order to give life to a new wheat stalk. (John 12:24.)
I have been reading a new article by Jerry Coyne in The New Republic, which is a dual book review. In the best tradition of literary criticism Coyne does far more than give a thumbs up or thumbs down of the books he has read. He is also approaching his understanding of the concepts of the books. In this case he reviews these books (c -and p because I am getting exhausted and don’t want to create footnotes:)
Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution
By Karl W. Giberson
(HarperOne, 248 pp., $24.95)Only A Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul
By Kenneth R. Miller
(Viking, 244 pp., $25.95)
Coyne says that both books miss the mark on Science-Religion and looks to Gould for help, but even the Non-Overlapping Magisteria are not helpful becaue the NOMA only says that each science and religion should ignore each other.
As Alden said in response to Anastasia’s post , “..because, for Theists, there are no purely secular events.” Perhaps for theists, there can be no secular science.
The observable world makes so much more sense without using God as any explanation. Coyne relates the story of Napoleon and LaPlace:
Scientists do indeed rely on materialistic explanations of nature, but it is important to understand that this is not an a priori philosophical commitment. It is, rather, the best research strategy that has evolved from our long-standing experience with nature. There was a time when God was a part of science. Newton thought that his research on physics helped clarify God’s celestial plan. So did Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who devised our current scheme for organizing species. But over centuries of research we have learned that the idea “God did it” has never advanced our understanding of nature an iota, and that is why we abandoned it. In the early 1800s, the French mathematician Laplace presented Napoleon with a copy of his great five-volume work on the solar system, the Mechanique Celeste. Aware that the books contained no mention of God, Napoleon taunted him, “Monsieur Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.” Laplace answered, famously and brusquely: “Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothese-la,” “I have had no need of that hypothesis.” And scientists have not needed it since.
Certain dispensers of modernism would do well to remember that science does not exist to displace the need for an active creator. It just happens to work out that way.
This is, after all, a finely-tuned universe.
Similarly, religion does not exist to provide explanations for how things work in the natural world. It just happened to occupy that gap in an era when we didn’t know any better.
It’s having a hard time letting go of that role, isn’t it?
Mike, first, consider correcting the spelling of Dennett’s name. My only other comment on your post is that you are incorrect, as are most of your fellow atheist critics of “theistic evolution,” when you identify the Problem of Evil as a specific problem for Christians who accept evolutionary theory. All of your words, and all of Coyne’s, and all of PZ’s, add up to nothing more than this: you think the Problem of Evil is huge. You may have a point on that, but you’re badly mistaken in thinking it’s a problem for a Christian evolutionist any more than it’s a problem for a Christian creationist. Read less Coyne (his statements on science and religion are sophomoric) and try John Wilkins instead. In the meantime, don’t expect me to take seriously any of this talk about a “quandary” for “theistic evolutionists.” Your beef isn’t with theistic evolution. It’s with theism.
NOMA is an artifice, an attempt to get religion to willingly waive its authority to evolutionary, uniformitarian dogma, so long as it calls itself science. NOMA is bunk, an artificial constraint upon either science or religion.
Having said that, Gould stated specifically in Rocks of Ages [his definitive work on NOMA] that it was an irenic [the cold irenic] fallacy to decide that science and religion should adopt the Three Monkeys Approach and simply ignore one another. NOMA requires discourse.
Of course, Gould’s notion of science was well-defined, while his notion of religion was fuzzy, except that it could not comment upon anything he’d decreed by fiat to be underthe magisterium of science – so whatever religion remained [in a broader sense] could entertain the clockwinder God, but certainly nothing like miracles, divine intervention, revelation, God-given morality or the like. God in a box. His fuzzy notion of God is really so irrelevant as to be absent. I’m sure he’d like it that way, at any rate. He states explicitly throughout Rocks of Ages that we have to finding meaning and morality within ourselves, which seems to be the extent of what he thinks religion is [or ought to be]. These artificial definitions of science, religion and the boundaries of their alleged magisterium make his whole argument for NOMA a grandiose straw man.
–Sirius Knott
creationletter.com
[…] commenter at Clashing Culture has written the Creation Letter used for the project. I commented at Sirius Knott’s site, […]
Relkigion has no authority except that which scientists foolishly concede.
I’m not going to defend the specifics of NOMA. However…
Science already constrains itself: it is self-limited to only cover that which is testable. By that alone, it excludes itself to a bunch of important questions for humanity, such as questions of morality. (“How” and “what” questions are fair game for science, “should we” questions are not.)
NOMA as an attempt to get religion to accept similar constraints.
Like all pioneering attempts, it’s far from perfect. But it’s an early step in the right direction.
Great blog and great post!
As a theist i disagree with its conclusions though. I believe that any of God’s Creation, in order to be different from His Creator, needs contingency. Evolution acts as the way for life to overcome contingency and death, and to keep surviving. I believe evolution is about life, not death and for this I thank God (because this is, after all, a finely-tuned universe…)
Still, it is absolutely great to see people discussing rationally subjects like this one! Great blog
Paz
@pseudonymn:
I think we’re forgetting that the Bible does make claims about the natural world. If the claims of the Bible and science conflict [largely because of the assumption of naturalism itself], one of these authorities must give sway.
You were correct to note that NOMA is an attempt to get religion to accept certain constraints. If you’ve read Gould’s book [and not everyone has, of course], you find that this imposed dichotomous straw man of religion as faith, feelings and morality and science being fact, nature and the material world only allows for bare-bones deism. We’re not even allowed to invoke the anthropic principle!
Two points:
[1] Gould invokes three more magisteria in his book: art, philosophy and morality. The latter I realized he would hint at somewhere in his argument, for if the magisterium of religion holds authority of questions of morality [as he states throughout most of the book], that means it may be morality’s fountainhead. He can’t have that. Morality must be able to be derived from non-religious sources according to his naturalistic assumptions. So after placating the magisterium of religion with the olive branch of authority in metaphysical matters like morality, Gould makes a bait-and-switch by later invoking a magisterium of morality. Without much comment, I might add. You can see what he’s doing here. Morality covered by its own magisterium and meaning covered by philosophy [much more harmonious to his stated belief that a person dreives their own meaning and morality]: religion becomes obsolete. Defunct. Exactly as he would have it. Subtle sophistry.
[2] The idea of facts as existing independent of interpretation is hubris. Facts are never self-evident, as Gould tends to use them. But he uses it so to re-inforce the straw man of unbiased science fact versus personal beliefs. The fact is that both evolution and creation are unfalsifiable and unprovable, but both backed by weights of evidences, facts and arguments of reason. In short, they are both reasonable faiths, though I find one more reasonable than the other.
@Mike:
Respectfully, sir, I disagree whole-heartedly. Science is interpretation of the natural world, not its authority. The only authority is its Maker. If He had not made the world so orderly and rationally, science would be an impossible, even inconceivable endeavor. Claims of science’s authority, if God exists, are presumptive.
Rev. Anthony W Breeden
[sometimes known as Sirius Knott]
creationletter.com
Sirius, in order for God to have any authority it has to be assigned to him by Us. Surely you can understand why I don’t accept any more authority for God than I do for Peter Pan. The “if God exists” part is key, and I wonder where the presumption lay.
@Mike:
That is by far the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard.
Since God made us and everything else, He doesn’t need our vote or approval to be in charge. In fact, any authority we might have is simply by His allowance.
Furthermore, it makes no difference whether you accept the authority someone else legitimately has or not. Point in fact, Kent Hovind [jailed for charges unrelated to Creationism] believed that the government had no authority in an area where it legitimately did. As a result, he answered to their authority. Likewise, whether you recognize God’s authority or not, He still has it and you will in fact answer to Him one day.
Also, your peter Pan straw man fails for the excellent reason that Pan makes no caims to authority while God does.
The only way God would require His authority to be assigned by men is if He were only a construct of men’s imaginations, which rather presumes evolution is true. That should answer your question as to where the presumption lies.
Regards,
Sirius Knott
Oh, Sirius, you are just so darn cute. Too bad you will have to answer to Allah some day and he will punish you for following a false religion.
(Two can play this game.)
As an atheist, I’m soft-core rather than hard; but I do wonder about the presumtion that God is “he”–rather than she, it, or (as my wife says) they. God’s being a committee, after all, would help explain why everything is so screwed up…
“The only way God would require His authority to be assigned by men is if He were only a construct of men’s imaginations”
Oh Sirius, you came dangerously close to the truth there, didnt you?
Although I stumbled on this website in pursuit of verifying the LaPlace quotation, I must say I shall return to this intensely stimulating discussion. Serious food for the mind is hard to come by.
Curiouser and curiouser … I have a great anticipation for a post-theistic worldview (much like Colin McGinn) where this debate is unnecessary. In the meantime, aesthetics and morality are not so mysterious at all when one takes into account neurological evolution within a social context … even the esoterica of philosophy become rather like silly child’s play under such rigorous scrutiny. The fact that so much of our current evolution lies in the software of learning laid upon a foundation of wetware with extreme plasticity makes room for certain applied philosophy which was religion’s purpose for a long time. However, the inflexible dogmatic approach associated with many traditions makes the “God” concept a potential bed of stagnant compost ripe with explosive dangers. That such a first cause or source may exist is less relevant than the notion of unified field which suggests a new understanding of what the nature of that phenomena is right now and how we may personally interact within it.
On a much lighter note, She/He/It happens, man, all the time! Why matters less that what we are going to do about it here, now. On this point, the more advanced opines of both belief systems seem to converge. it’s the means, rather than the ends, which seem to be the subjective argument.
*[True: that is, the word True, but with a capital letter T,
not a lower case t. And while it may remain true that the lower case
sense of the word true is subjective (‘a priori’) in
nature and, despite all objections, to the contrary, it is
the subjective experiences of man, and man’s limit is in being capable
of knowing only the lower case ‘truth’/’true’, not
objective sense. Free will then of course is truly a confounded idea, and I would beg any of you to question the idea of your own free will, for what situation involves free will as defined as an uncaused action. Determinism seems much more likely, but of course one cant be 100% sure. Science uses primarily inductive reasoning. Philosophy on the other hands provides us with deductive reasoning(logic). Religion was created by philosophers to control people. Religion therefore serves no purpose in finding true salvation, but only confounds us into being brainwashed by people who pretend they know more(hive mind). But of course i must state that we can never truly know any thing 100%. And i want to leave you all with this simple statement. “Piety is not what the lesson bring to the people, It’s the mistake they bring to the lessons.” It is beneficial to our genes to believe in god because it makes us more likely to replicate as well as find a spouse. That’s is why religion is beneficial, it groups us together, and is the only positive of religion. If we dont challenge the beliefs of authority we will never find Truth. Dogma of any sort is absolutely intolerable. The wisest man creates his own beliefs with bits and pieces of all aspects. Religion tries to save us from our lost soul’s, which we never lost in the first place. A snake convinced a woman to eat an apple and now were screwed, Yes fairy tails do indeed build churches.
if we have a gene for god which we do (Vmat2). Then isn’t god just an illusion.
“It is a world of beauty, yes, but perhaps beauty is all the more precious to us because we know that in large part we will all die and so will all of our fellow life.”
Of course an omnipotent being could have arranged it so we would have all of the good but none of the bad.