Each year, for the past twelve years, in February, around the birthday of Charles Darwin, a “Darwin Week” conference is held here in Charleston. It consists of various programs and presentations related to science in general and evolutionary studies in particular.
“Darwin Week” is coordinated by my buddy, Rob Dillon, who is an evolutionary biologist and professor at the College of Charleston, as well as a tenor in the local First (Scots) Presbyterian “Kirk Choir.” Which may dispel any stereotype that evolutionary biologists are assumed to be atheists (or at least agnostics). Since Dr. Dillon is a more militant Calvinist than John Calvin would have ever considered himself to be.
One of this year’s programs, which I recently attended, was billed as a “debate.” It was held at the local Circular Congregational Church (of which I am, as a Baptist minister with clergy standing in the United Church of Christ, a member).This so-called debate was entitled “Are Science and Religion Compatible?”
One of the participants in the debate was a professor from the University of Chicago who is quite as distinguished by his strident atheism as by his eminence as an evolutionary biologist. His “opponent,” if you will, was a young woman theologian at the Lutheran Seminary in Chicago, which is located but a few blocks from the university. In other words, these two prominent scholars, in neighboring institutions, had managed to escape a day or so of Chicago winter for the more cordial climate of Charleston this time of year.
As a “debate”–it wasn’t. The participants merely “talked past” each other. Because the assigned “terms” were never defined. Making the engagement anything but “scientific.” Since “science” has everything to do with being precise.
It’s impossible to “play any game”–even one called “arguing,” in any classical sense (in contrast to “playing uproar”)–if the participants can’t, won’t or don’t agree on the “rules of the game.” In this instance, the minimal defining of at least “science, religion, compatible.” What, in other words–at least in this context–do each of these terms mean?
“Science,” of course, is more easily and clearly defined than “religion.” It’s a method of “knowing” that is empirical. If you can’t “test, observe and/or measure” whatever is “material” or “physical”–it isn’t “science.” Which, the biologist argued, makes “science” credible, while “religion” is anything but.
Whereas “religion” can refer to a host of different beliefs and practices. For example, Buddhism, in its various forms, is commonly considered a “religion,” but is, technically, more of a “philosophy.” Unlike, for instance, the ethical monotheism of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Except, of course, even within these “historical” religions one can find seemingly inexhaustible differences.
Just as it is important to discern that whatever the “religion,” how its accrued institutional forms may not necessarily be congruent with the principles such a “religion” may claim to espouse. .
The young woman theologian–compared to me, for example–she was at a dis-advantage when it came to the biologist’s caricaturing of her religion. Not that she rejects “the kind of truth” evolutionary studies represent anymore than do I. The Bible is hardly a science book; it is, rather, concerned with matters other than “science,” no less true, only different. She is, however, a Lutheran. In her case, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (since there are various varieties of Lutherans). Which means that she is an ordained minster in what is considered a “creedal” church. Thus, the biologist didn’t miss a chance to ridicule various doctrinal expressions in certain historic Lutheran creeds–which the young woman may not have agreed with anymore than I would–yet, by virtue of being ordained in such a “creedal church” would be considered as representative of such beliefs.
Whereas I, a Baptist minister, have been ordained in a particular Christian tradition which espouses what is termed “the priesthood of the believer.” Which means that no one–clergy or laity–has the authority to tell anyone else what to believe in matters of faith and/or practice. The purpose being not to necessarily agree on all matters of theology and ethics, but to at least seek to “disagree agreeably.” And this same “priesthood of the believer” principle is found, as well, in the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the two other Christian traditions in which I hold clergy standing.
If the “process” of any human engagement may be even more important than the “content,” the biologist and the theologian were not engaged in any way meant to promote “compatibility.” For while her emphasis was on “relating” to the biologist (with respect to his “scientific” perspective), he was only interested in “dismissing” the theologian (with respect to hers, or anyone’s “religious” perspective). Her emphasis was on the “process” of the engagement; his, on the “content.” According to my previous analogy, they were “playing” the “arguing” game by “different rules.”
Except somewhere in the process the biologist confessed that calling himself an “atheist” was not a “scientific” claim. Since, according to the principles of scientific inquiry, if one can’t “prove” whatever–in this instance, God–one can’t also “dis-prove” it/he/she/they. Thus, he acknowledged that he should more precisely define himself as an “agnostic”–literally, “I don’t know.”
Perhaps without realizing it, the biologist was embracing a principle essential to both “religion” and “science.” At least the kind of religion expressed in the Bible and the Qur’an. Where God is not a “conclusion,” but a “premise.”
Likewise for “science,” which proceeds on the “assumption” that the material/physical world is “real,” rather than an “illusion.” Which, of course, is precisely what the Bible and the Qur’an at least imply. In contrast to the classic Eastern religions, not unlike the Platonic Idealism of the ancient Greeks, which posit just the opposite: that what is spiritual is real, while the material/physical is illusory.
As a mode of “thinking,” then, the “science” of the biologist on this occasion was not unlike a comparable, but opposite form of “dualistic thinking” (either/or) in the Eastern religions and ancient Greek Platonism. In the former, only the material/physical is “real.” While in the latter, the only “reality” is the spiritual.
In the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, however, both are “real”–the material/physical and the spiritual. Christians, for instance, live in “two worlds”–and both at the same time–one is material/physical; the other, moral and spiritual. As in the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush
aglow . . . ,” in reference to the non-dualistic thinking reflected in, for example, Exodus 3 and Luke 24: 28 ff.
Not that she stated it so overtly, but the theologian seemed to at least be implying that “science” and “religion” (at least ethical monotheism) should better be seen, not so much as necessarily “compatible” (as modes of inquiry), but as rather “complementary” (and hopefully “cooperative”).
Since all religions–even polytheistic ones–are, to whatever degree, concerned with morality Whereas “science” isn’t. Not that “science” is im-moral any more than it is moral. It is, rather–the method of “knowing” called “science”–it is a-moral. Such then, if “science” is to be “moral,” whatever that “morality” may be–it has to come from some other source. For many, that is “religion,” stated or implied.
To think of science/religion as more “complementary” than necessarily “compatible”–this can likely be illustrated in various ways. As in this scenario.
The “objectivity” of “science” challenges the “subjectivity” of “religion.” And vice versa. At least if one acknowledges that much of what is “true” in life involves subjectivity as well as objectivity (which David Brooks argues so cogently, with respect to modern brain studies, in his important 2011 book, The Social Animal).
For example, likely no other setting represents the objectivity of “science”–certainly in its most “applied” sense–than the modern hospital. Yet it is not uncommon these days for persons to actually “will” (legally), when facing “terminal illness,” to not have their “lives sustained” in ways that today’s modern applications of “science” are quite capable of doing.
Not all such persons are, of course, necessarily “religious.” But many are. Is it fair to say, then, that–in such circumstances–“religion” serves to humanize “science” in “complementary,” perhaps even “cooperative,” if not necessarily “compatible” ways?
Or again, I commonly provide pastoral counseling (“religion,” in at least its humanizing implications) for/with patients who have been prescribed–by a physician–psychotropic medication (applied “science”). Since there has been significant research (“science”) which concludes that such “complementary/cooperative” modes of treatment enhance healing in ways that neither one nor the other can as adequately provide.
