I said in my last post
that there were some things that came up that I wished to discuss further, so
here goes. I have always maintained that
science and religion are not incompatible.
I have now come to the conclusion that, in fact, they are. Not, I hasten to add, mutually exclusive,
merely incompatible. They are trains
running on parallel tracks of different gauge; the scientific train cannot run
on the religious rails, and the religious train can’t run on the scientific
ones. I believe, for what it’s worth,
that they are nonetheless running in the same direction.
My wife mentioned to me a comment she’d read online from an
atheist who said that the only logical position was to assume that God does not
exist, and then see if there’s any evidence for Him. I think that this perfectly encapsulates the
problem. To me, this is like saying that
the only logical position is to assume that grass is not green or that
aeroplanes can’t fly, and then try and find evidence to prove or disprove the
hypothesis. In this instance, the proof
is comparatively easy (some existential contortions aside), but that doesn’t
mean that the position is logical. You
can see that the grass is green and that aeroplanes fly; you don’t assume, for
the sake of cold rationalism, that it is not so until you have conducted a full
scientific study.
At one point (the
probably apocryphal story goes), the scientific evidence showed that bumblebees
were unable to fly, due to principles of lift and aerodynamics. It was, however, everybody’s (including the
bees’) experience that they could fly, so it was obvious that the scientific
model being used was incorrect. At no
point did anyone (especially the bees) think it logical to hypothesise that
they were earth-bound until the science could be figured out.
Likewise the theist’s
experience of God. It is my experience
that God exists, therefore it seems unutterably daft to suggest that it is only
logical to assume that he doesn’t.
‘Provide proof then,’ we are told, and of course we cannot. The problem is that what they mean by proof
is scientific proof, and that underlines the problem with the basic background
scientism and rationalism of the world in which we live. It assumes that we live in a wholly rational
world which can be wholly understood by science. It assumes that everything, prayer, miracles,
even God Himself, are essentially scientific phenomena, and that if they are
not, then they do not exist.
The problem with this
should be obvious to everyone. As soon
as you say, ‘But what if they are not scientific phenomena,’ the argument falls
down, and what actually happens is that you are either accused of talking
nonsense, refusing to give an actual answer or simply knocking over the
chessboard. Such a ludicrous suggestion
(heresy?) cannot be permitted to stand, and the very idea is anathema to a
great many people.
Because we are born into
this scientistic, rationalistic milieu, it is also the way we tend to think and
approach problems. The scientific method
suffuses almost everything we do, and the way we approach every single problem,
and while for many things this works well, for many other things it doesn’t. This isn’t only true of religion, it comes
into play a lot when looking at many subjects, such as sociology and
anthropology. Humans are, despite modern
schools of thought and modern wishes and intentions, still essentially
illogical, irrational and emotional. Nonetheless,
we always try and act ‘rationally’ and ‘logically’ as though these attributes
are inherently praiseworthy as opposed to merely useful. I discussed this in my last post; the
tendency and desire to answer rationalistic objections with rationalistic
answers for fear that it will otherwise appear that there is no answer at all,
but that is merely seeking to squeeze religious thought into a scientific mould,
and it simply won’t fit.
Where religion makes
essentially scientific claims about the world, about creation, the origins of
life etc., then the scientific answers are clearly superior to the purely
religious ones. These claims are a
hangover of a time when there were no scientific answers, and so religious ones
were substituted. The problem is the
assumption that this holds true for every single religious claim or tenet. Religion has much to say on morality,
philosophy and the discussion of why we are here, why the universe should exist
at all, and what we ought to be doing, since it does. It talks about hope, courage, love, faith,
loyalty; things that are not scientific but are still desperately important.
There are also intrinsic
problems with the assumption that we live in a purely scientific world. How does one go about testing it? Scientifically? If I assert (and I am) that not everything is
bound by the laws of science, then the immediate urge is to test it, attempt to
observe unscientific phenomena, study them, test them to find out if they
follow certain laws or not. Again the
problem should be immediately obvious.
You are trying to apply scientific principles. All the studies of the ‘efficacy’ of prayer
have followed this route. They have made
use of double-blinds and control groups, set up experimental conditions and
parameters, and attempted to see whether prayer works, and the rules by which
it works. What they’ve found is not (as
it is claimed) that prayer doesn’t work, but that it is not a scientific
phenomenon, and doesn’t work according to any laws or rules or predictable
patterns. (Actually, mostly what they’ve
proved, and very conclusively, is that the researchers have not the slightest
notion of what prayer actually is.) However,
the assumption is that since prayer doesn’t work scientifically, it therefore
must not work at all.
Likewise with miracles,
which by very definition are unscientific.
Again I’ve touched on this before, and discussed the circular logic
which says ‘There have never been any miracles because they are impossible, and
I know they’re impossible because they have never occurred. Anything that appears to be a miracle is
merely science that we don’t understand, and I know this because miracles are
impossible’. The same thing applies equally
to all religious thought, and most especially God. Most of the objections raised against the
idea of God, the questions of where He came from and how He works, are all
based on the assumption that God can be understood using the rules and logic of
the universe. If God, as is believed, is
a spatially infinite and temporally eternal being outside, above and pre-dating
the universe, why on Earth (if you’ll pardon the phrase) would we suppose that He’d
be bound by its rules?
Religion is not based on
rationalism or logic or scientific experiment; it is based on thought and experience. At the same time, I certainly don’t consider
religious belief ‘irrational’, it’s just that it doesn’t necessarily fit the
scientific paradigm of inductive reasoning.
I cannot prove that I saw a beautiful sunrise this morning. We could get up early and watch the sunrise
tomorrow, and it might be beautiful, but it would not be the same sunrise. It is not safe or logical to assume that the
sun hasn’t therefore risen today, and to assume that that glowing yellow thing
in the sky is not the sun because it cannot be proven purely logically that it
has risen.
The two modes of thought
work in very different, almost opposite ways.
Science starts with a theory and tries to find evidence to prove it
correct or incorrect. Religion starts
with an experience and then seeks to understand it. My keyboard and my monitor are not opposed to
each other, they both function to allow me to use my computer, but the keyboard
won’t do the job of the monitor, the monitor won’t do the job of the keyboard,
and they won’t plug into each other’s sockets in the back.
Likewise religion and
science. Both are about increasing and
improving our knowledge of our universe and ourselves, and they are not
mutually exclusive or inherently opposed.
One is not ‘better’ than the other, or more worthwhile pursuing outside
the context of their specific roles. Both
have their part to play, and neither can or should be ignored. It’s just that they are merely and totally incompatible
with each other.
