How many gods are there? What are their natures and moral creeds? Is there an afterlife? Why is there moral and physical evil? There is no one answer to any of these questions. All is mystery, for all rests on faith. So how do the faithful reconcile science and religion? Often they point to the existence of religious scientists, like NIH Director Francis Collins , or to the many religious people who accept science. Others argue that in the past religion promoted science and inspired questions about the universe.
Certainly evolutionary biology, my own field , has been held back strongly by creationism , which arises solely from religion. What is not disputable is that today science is practiced as an atheistic discipline — and largely by atheists.
Science, on the other hand, assumes that there are no transcendent, immaterial forces and that all forces which do exist within the universe behave in an ultimately objective or random fashion. The nature of these forces, and all other scientific knowledge, is revealed only through human effort in a dynamic process of inquiry.
The universe as a whole is assumed to be neutral to human concerns and to be open to any and all questions, even those concerning human ethical relationships. Such a universe does not come to us with easy answers; we must come to it and be prepared to work hard.
The scientist will add water to bring all the tubes to the same volume and then add a reagent which reacts with protein to produce a blue color. After the solutions in all the test tubes have reacted for a specified period of time, the scientist will measure the intensity of the blue color with a spectrophotometer.
By comparing the color intensity of the unknown solutions, she will be able to calculate how much standard protein is needed to produce the same color reaction as the unknown, and this, the scientist will conclude, is the amount of protein in the unknown sample.
What our hypothetical scientist has done is to perform a controlled experiment. She must report it honestly and completely, including a description or a reference to the method. She must also be prepared to say that all variables which could have affected the reported result, to the best of her knowledge and belief, have been kept constant for example, by using a water bath to maintain a constant temperature or have been measured as were the different volumes of the unknown solution and standard solution or are random measurement errors or perhaps proteinaceous dust motes from the surrounding air.
This is the essence of the scientific method. Clearly, such a controlled experiment would be impossible if our scientist were required to entertain the possibility that some factor exists that can affect the color in the test tubes but which can never be controlled in these ways — a factor that cannot be held constant, cannot be measured by any physical means, and cannot be said to act randomly.
But that is exactly what the religious, supernaturalist worldview does require. Untestable, unmeasurable, and nonrandom occurrences are commonplace in all supernatural religions and pseudosciences. This fundamental incompatibility between the supernaturalism of traditional religion and the experimental method of science has been, nevertheless, remarkably easy to dismiss.
The findings of science over the past three centuries have been eagerly welcomed for their practical value. The method, however, has been treated with suspicion, even scorn.
It has been perceived as being responsible for revealing the material workings of ever more of the mysteries of life which used to inspire religious awe. From the point of view of the religious believer, it has seemed as though the goal of science has been to push belief in the supernatural to ever more remote redoubts until it might disappear entirely.
This is not, and cannot be, the goal of science. But, with the knowledge of those times, the truths appeared to be inconsistent. Again I will give you another example taken from the state of modern physical science. Since the time of Newton and Huyghens in the seventeenth century there have been two theories as to the physical nature of light.
Newton's theory was that a beam of light consists of a stream of very minute particles, or corpuscles, and that we have the sensation of light when these corpuscles strike the retinas of our eyes. Huyghens's theory was that light consists of very minute waves of trembling in an all-pervading ether, and that these waves are traveling along a beam of light. The two theories are contradictory. In the eighteenth century Newton's theory was believed, in the nineteenth century Huyghens's theory was believed.
Today there is one large group of phenomena which can be explained only on the wave theory, and another large group which can be explained only on the corpuscular theory. Scientists have to leave it at that, and wait for the future, in the hope of attaining some wider vision which reconciles both.
We should apply these same principles to the questions in which there is a variance between science and religion. We should believe nothing in either sphere of thought which does not appear to us to be certified by solid reasons based upon the critical research either of ourselves or of competent authorities.
But, granting that we have honestly taken this precaution, a clash between the two on points of detail where they overlap should not lead us hastily to abandon doctrines for which we have solid evidence.
It may be that we are more interested in one set of doctrines than in the other. But, if we have any sense of perspective and of the history of thought, we shall wait and refrain from mutual anathemas.
We should wait; but we should not wait passively, or in despair. The clash is a sign that there are wider truths and finer perspectives within which a reconciliation of a deeper religion and a more subtle science will be found. In one sense, therefore, the conflict between science and religion is a slight matter which has been unduly emphasized. A mere logical contradiction cannot in itself point to more than the necessity of some readjustments, possibly of a very minor character, on both sides.
Remember the widely different aspects of events which are dealt with in science and in religion respectively. Science is concerned with the general conditions which are observed to regulate physical phenomena, whereas religion is wholly wrapped up in the contemplation of moral and aesthetic values.
On the one side there is the law of gravitation, and on the other the contemplation of the beauty of holiness. What one side sees the other misses, and vice versa. For physical science you have in these lives merely ordinary examples of the operation of the principles of physiological chemistry, and of the dynamics of nervous reactions; for religion you have lives of the most profound significance in the history of the world.. Can you be surprised that, in the absence of a perfect and complete phrasing of the principles of science and the principles of.
It would be a miracle if it were not so. It would, however, be missing the point to think that we need not trouble ourselves about the conflict between science and religion. In an intellectual age there can be no active interest which puts aside all hope of a vision of the harmony of truth. To acquiesce in discrepancy is destructive of candor and of moral cleanliness. It belongs to the self-respect of intellect to pursue every tangle of thought to its final unravelment.
If you check that impulse, you will get no religion and no science from an awakened thoughtfulness. The important question is, In what spirit are we going to face the issue? There we come to something absolutely vital.
A clash of doctrines is not a disaster — it is an opportunity. I will explain my meaning by some illustrations from science. The weight of an atom of nitrogen was well known. Also it was an established scientific doctrine that the average weight of such atoms in any considerable mass will be always the same. Two experimenters, the late Lord Rayleigh and the late Sir William Ramsay, found that if they obtained nitrogen by two different methods, each equally effective for that purpose, they always observed a persistent slight difference between the average weights of the atoms in the two cases.
Now I ask you, would it have been rational of these men to have despaired because of this conflict between chemical theory and scientific observation? Suppose that for some reason the chemical doctrine had been highly prized throughout some district as the foundation of its social order would it have been wise, would it have been candid, would it have been moral, to forbid the disclosure of the fact that the experiments produced discordant results?
Or, on the other hand, should Sir William Ramsay and Lord Rayleigh have proclaimed that chemical theory was now a detected delusion? We see at once that either of these ways would have been a method of facing the issue in an entirely wrong spirit. What Rayleigh and Ramsay did do was this. They at once perceived that they had hit upon a line of investigation which would disclose some subtlety of chemical theory that had hitherto eluded observation.
The discrepancy was not a disaster — it was an opportunity to increase the sweep of chemical knowledge. You all know the end of the story: finally argon was discovered, a new chemical element which had lurked undetected, mixed with the nitrogen. But the story has a sequel which forms my second illustration. This discovery drew attention to the importance of observing accurately minute differences in chemical substances as obtained by different methods.
Further researches of the most careful accuracy were undertaken. Finally another physicist, Ashton, working in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge in England, discovered that even the same element might assume two or more distinct forms, termed 'isotopes,' and that the law of the constancy of average atomic weight holds for each of these forms, but as between the different isotopes differs slightly.
The research has effected a great stride in the power of chemical theory, far transcending in importance the discovery of argon, from which it originated. The moral of these stories lies on the surface, and I will leave to you their application to the case of religion and science.
In formal logic a contradiction is the signal of a defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory. This is one great reason for the utmost toleration of variety of opinion.
Once and forever this duty of toleration has been summed up in the words, 'Let both grow together until the harvest. But we have not yet exhausted the discussion of the moral temper required for the pursuit of truth. There are short cuts leading merely to an illusory success.
It is easy enough to find a theory, logically harmonious and with important applications in the region of fact, provided that you are content to disregard half your evidence. Every age produces people with clear logical intellects, and with the most praiseworthy grasp of the importance of some sphere of human experience, who have elaborated, or inherited, a scheme of thought that exactly fits those experiences which claim their interest.
Such people are apt resolutely to ignore, or to explain away, all evidence which confuses their scheme with contradictory instances. What they cannot fit in is for them nonsense. An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of fashionable opinion. This advice seems so easy, and is in fact so difficult to follow. One reason for this difficulty is that we cannot think first and act afterward.
From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought. We have, therefore, in various spheres of experience to adopt those ideas which seem to work within those spheres. It is absolutely necessary to trust to ideas which are generally adequate, even though we know that there are subtleties and distinctions beyond our ken.
Also, apart from the necessities of action, we cannot even keep before our minds the whole evidence except under the guise of doctrines which are incompletely harmonized. We cannot think in terms of an indefinite multiplicity of detail; our evidence can acquire its proper importance only if it comes before us marshaled by general ideas.
These ideas we inherit — they form the tradition of our civilization. Such traditional ideas are never static. They are either fading into meaningless formulae or gaining power by the new lights thrown by a more delicate apprehension.
They are transformed by the urge of critical reason, by the vivid evidence of emotional experience, and by the cold certainties of scientific perception. One fact is certain: you cannot keep them still. No generation can merely reproduce its ancestors. You may preserve the life in a flux of form, or preserve the form amid an ebb of life.
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