It’s been a while since I posted
something sparked by an online debate.
Two or three weeks ago now, the BBC ran a story on how a patient in
a permanent vegetative state had responded well to a new treatment. They opened
the story up for comments, and the whole thing played out with tedious
inevitability. Indeed the very first comment was a pre-emptive complaint about
how no doubt religious people would soon be on there, complaining and making
unfavourable comparisons between the efficacy of medical science and prayer.
Sigh.
I pointed out with as much patience
as possible that science and religion are not intrinsically opposed, and that
prayer, scientific research and experimentation are not mutually exclusive.
I received the following response:
“Fair enough comment about them not being mutually exclusive, but you
cannot say religion isn't diametrically opposed to science. Stem cell research
could save thousands in PVS and with congenital disorders, yet religion
actively lobbies against these research methods and indeed their very funding.
How can that be construed as not being opposed to science in this case?”
I think this perfectly encapsulates a
widely-held misconception about the attitude of those with religious beliefs
towards science and scientific discoveries. I won’t re-argue the point about
‘religion’ not having its own volition, and therefore not actively lobbying
anything. Let’s take that as read, and assume that the poster was instead referring
to persons with religious beliefs. Let us also try and ignore the fact that
‘science and religion’ is a false dichotomy in the first place, and just work
with what we have.
The idea of ‘religion’ being
‘anti-science’ is probably rooted in the oft-repeated stories about the
persecution of Galileo with regards to the heliocentric universe. It wasn’t a
good episode in the Church’s history, and they have admitted since that they
were wrong. It was also several hundred years ago, and to continue to use it to
show that religious folk today are anti-science seems a little weak.
Nowadays, if religion were actually
anti-science, religious people would object to any given scientific study or
discovery simply because it’s a scientific study or discovery. They do not.
Indeed, the vast, vast majority of theists are all in favour of science, along
with the improvements in medicine and living conditions that it brings. What
they do object to, and I think this is where the confusion comes in, is
specific applications of scientific or medical techniques that they consider to
be immoral.
To take the poster’s example of
stem-cell research, the objections are nothing at all to do with the
scientificness of the studies, but with ethical concerns regarding the sourcing
of stem cells from human embryos. The arguments for and against such studies
are not the subject of this post and I don’t intend to get into them here. No
doubt there are plenty of ignorant people who assume that all stem cells are
sourced from human embryos, which is not the case, and thus desire a blanket
ban on all stem cell research. However, a few ignorant people should hardly be
taken as being representative of ‘Religion’, no matter how easy it makes it for
antitheists to sneer at religion as a whole. Indeed, being opposed to something
simply because you don’t understand it is hardly the sole domain of theists; I
would suggest that it also rather accurately describes the stance of many antitheists
towards religion.
To use another common example, an
opposition to eugenics would hardly be considered ‘anti-science’. The movement
for nuclear disarmament isn’t an objection to science. The banning of chemical
and biological weapons doesn’t imply an objection to modern medicine. They are
merely objections to objectionable applications of (in the case of eugenics at
least, some really rather poor) science.
We can debate the rights and wrongs
of any given study or process or application of the same, but at no point is
this an opposition to ‘Science’. If anything, it is an argument in favour of
it. It reflects an ardent desire to make sure that science remains a force for
good. In and of itself, science is merely a tool, as morally neutral as a
hammer. The desire to use a hammer to build a house instead of to bash in
someone’s skull hardly makes one anti-hammers; it makes one incredibly
pro-hammers because you wish to see them being used properly for the purpose
for which they were intended, and not abused as a weapon to increase human
suffering.
Science is morally neutral, and
therefore requires a moral framework within which to act. Not all such moral
frameworks are religious, but historically it is religion that has supplied
them. Christianity tells us that the sick ought to be healed, the hungry fed,
the naked clothed. Since science, when used correctly, allows us to do this
more effectively, we can hardly be opposed to it as a whole.
