The End of Christianity (37 page)

Ian Barbour, from a more theistic perspective (he is a winner of the Templeton Prize, awarded to scholars who contribute to religion-science reconciliation), categorizes the relationships between religion and the sciences into four types that he names
conflict, independence, dialogue
, and
integration
.
¹⁹
The conflict relation is equivalent to Shermer's conflicting-worlds model, while the integration relation is comparable to his same-worlds model. However, Barbour insists that the conflict view is a product of mistakes on both sides, namely scientific materialism and biblical literalism; instead the integration view explicitly marries religion and science in interesting (if not awkward or nonsensical) couples like “natural theology” or a “theology of nature” or some “systematic synthesis” in which “both science and religion contribute to the development of an inclusive metaphysics, such as that of process philosophy.”
²⁰
(Francis Collins adds “theistic evolution” to the mix, and while we are at it, why not Christian Science and theistic chemistry?) That leaves independence and dialogue, which are probably recognizable as subtypes of the separate-worlds model. The independence relation is based on the presumed contrasting methods or “languages” of religion vis-à-vis science, while dialogue itself is a set of diverse solutions that go further toward reconciliation than independence but not as far as integration.

Finally, for our purposes, Massimo Pigliucci has proposed a more subtle range of relationships, building on the same/separate/conflicting worlds to yield nine different forms represented by specific theories and models (and associated with specific scientists or theists). These forms include Scientific Theism, Faith and Reason, Neo-Creationism, Theistic Science, the Strong and Weak Anthropic Principle, and Gould's NOMA (nonoverlapping magisteria), among others.
²¹
The point, ultimately, is that the question of “compatibility” is not a simple one but rather one conducive to many different answers and agendas. Indeed, some theists actively recruit science (at least some elements of science, occasionally in dubious ways) to support their theistic claims. Two well-known initiatives of this sort are the Intelligent Design movement and the “Reasons to Believe” project. Intelligent Design (ID), associated with Michael Behe (a scientist) and Phillip Johnson and William Dembski (not scientists) among others, is self-consciously “scientific.” In other words, ID researchers, often working under the auspices of the Discovery Institute, invoke science to criticize certain inadequacies of science (like the alleged failings of evolutionary theory or the “irreducible complexity” of phenomena like the human eye or the bacterial flagellum) and argue for an “intelligence” behind the universe, which is roughly the Christian God.
²²
Also putting science in the service of religion is Hugh Ross's “Reasons to Believe” work and the general “creation science” movement. Ross and his associates do not restrict themselves to any one area of science, nor are they ashamed to publicize their biblical agenda. “Whether you are looking for scientific support for your faith or answers to questions about God and science,” they state on their website, they offer a home for scientifically minded Christians.
²³
At their site one finds scientific sounding information about stratigraphy, biology, astronomy, and a congeries of other subjects that, like other brands of creation science, purportedly support the biblical/creationist account of the universe.

So it is disappointingly clear that the question of “compatibility” of religion and science can be answered in various and contradictory ways. Smart people from both camps answer yes, no, maybe, and sometimes, but usually without specifying what they mean by “compatibility” or—more profoundly—why we are asking in the first place. Even more disappointingly, a close inspection of the notion of “compatibility” does not settle the matter. Webster's defines compatibility in several related ways: as capable of living together in harmony, capable of cross-fertilizing freely, capable of forming a homogeneous mixture that neither separates nor is altered by interaction, and being or relating to a system that may receive another system without special modification.
²⁴
If we take these four criteria separately, we will see that the solution to the compatibility of religion and science is…yes, no, maybe, and sometimes.

If the question is “Are religion and science capable of living together in harmony?” then the answer is yes, no, maybe, and sometimes: for some people (like Behe and Ross) they seem harmonious, while for others (like Dawkins) they are mortal enemies. Further, it depends on which bit of religion or science you mean: most forms of Christianity are in harmony with atomic theory or gravitational theory and with technologies like metallurgy. But these things are, as we established above, neither “religion” nor “science.” And Christianity is most definitely
not
in harmony with evolutionary theory or big bang theory, and so on. If the question is “Are religion and science capable of cross-fertilizing freely?” the answer is “Surprisingly widely freely.” ID and Reasons to Believe allow them to cross-fertilize (or rather, allow science to fertilize religion). More significantly, though, in cross-fertilizing they sometimes produce weird hybrids, even bizarre mutations, like Christian Science, theistic evolution, creation science, and Scientology.

This only proves that religion is a malleable and adaptable species (see my earlier chapter in this book) that can absorb almost any influence—but that itself mutates as a result. Some Christians accept the scientific calculation of the age of the universe without abandoning their faith in creation (e.g., old-earth creationists versus young-earth creationists); the Catholic Church has even accepted the fact of biological evolution, simply adding to it that God intervened to introduce the human soul at some unknown moment. This sheds light on the third criterion of compatibility: true, religion and science may form a mixture, but each is altered by the interaction, in which case the answer is “no” to the question of compatibility. Religion after people add science is not the same, nor is science the same after religion is added. This applies to the fourth criterion as well: when one system (religion) receives another system (science), there will and must be a “special modification” in at least the religious system (as evinced by the fate of Galileo's or Darwin's work). Once science demonstrated that the earth revolved around the sun, the Christian cosmology had to change to accommodate this proven fact; other aspects of that cosmology could persist, perhaps later forced to accommodate other facts. Now that science has demonstrated that biological species, including humans, evolved from ancestors, the pope, as just noted, has been compelled to adjust Catholic claims about the origin of species accordingly.

The potential or actual damage to religion from “special modification” is unclear and obviously not fatal; the potential or actual damage to science (and to scientists) can be quite devastating. When scientists are imprisoned for their findings (like Galileo) or even killed for their speculations (like Giordano Bruno), or when their books are burned or their research forbidden, then a great price has been paid for accommodating science to religion. In an article on Islam and science, Todd Pitock gives a cautionary example. Chemist and Muslim Waheed Badawy first asserts that “Islam has no problems with science.” Then Pitock queried:

“What about, say, evolutionary biology or Darwinism?” I ask. (Evolution is taught in Egyptian schools, although it is banned in Saudi Arabia and Sudan.)

“If you are asking if Adam came from a monkey, no,” Badawy responds. “Man did not come from a monkey. If I am religious, if I agree with Islam, then I have to respect all of the ideas of Islam. And one of these ideas is the creation of the human from Adam and Eve. If I am a scientist, I have to believe that.”

“But from the point of view of a scientist, is it not just a story?” I ask. He tells me that if I were writing an article saying that Adam and Eve is a big lie, it will not be accepted until I can prove it.

“Nobody can just write what he thinks without proof. But we have real proof that the story of Adam as the first man is true.”

“What proof?”

He looks at me with disbelief. “It's written in the Koran.”
²⁵

IS RELIGION COMPATIBLE WITH SCIENCE?

Science should be taught not in order to support religion and not in order to destroy religion. Science should be taught simply ignoring religion.

—Steven Weinberg

As we ponder the question of the compatibility of religion and science, the first thing to ask is “Who cares?” Why should it matter to anyone if religion is compatible with science? From the point of view of science, it does not matter: if Weinberg is correct (and he is) science has no regard for anything except that which is detectable. Science is not out to help or to harm religion; it is fundamentally indifferent, ideally blind to anything except the facts. Individual
scientists
, as human beings and often religious believers, may care, but science as an enterprise does not and cannot care. So the subject of the compatibility of religion and science only matters to religion, more specifically to those who want to promote and protect, even shelter, religion from the adverse effects of facts and theories that contradict and destabilize religious claims and doctrines-and from the scientific premises and mentality that underlie those facts and theories.

Since in actual practice the question of the compatibility of religion and science amounts to a mission to rescue religion
from
science, the next thing to ask is “When does religion
need
rescuing from science?” That is, the original question about “compatibility” really disguises a deeper question: When, and in what way, does science threaten religion? The “when” is easy to see: science threatens religion when science disagrees with specific assertions (“beliefs” or “doctrines”) of religion. As we stated earlier, no religion disputes or rejects all aspects of science; conversely, each religion disputes or rejects different aspects of science. Christianity, as is too well-known, has a particular problem with scientific claims about human origins (the dreaded evolution idea), the age of the universe (the dreaded idea that Genesis cannot be literally true and without error), and the origin of the universe (the equally dreaded big bang idea). Hinduism, on the other hand, has much less objection to the scientific finding of an old universe, since Hinduism holds a much longer view of time; Buddhism tends to have less trouble with human evolution, since evolution's conception of each form leading to new form sounds a bit like Buddhism (this is one reason why Japanese scientists, for example, have often been better able to see the continuity between humans and apes than Western, Christian-influenced scientists).

And no major religion objects to basic scientific notions like “cause.” Well, that is not entirely true: the medieval Muslim concept of
kalam
did contradict the familiar scientific (and philosophical and rational) idea of cause. While
kalam
advocates did posit the reality of atoms and of empty space between atoms, they “denied that one event in the world could be the cause of another.”
²⁶
The reasoning was that “all events in the world are directly caused by God…and directly attributable to the Will of God…[N]othing is the cause of any other thing—God is the only cause, and the only explanation, of all processes observed in nature.”
²⁷
Thus, whether the question is the origin of humans, the reason why one billiard ball moves another, or what determines the spin of an electron, the answer is “Because God So Wills.”
²⁸
The impossibility, indeed the futility, of doing science under such a regime is obvious.

So religion only regards itself as “incompatible” with science when science is in disagreement with religion; when
science
agrees with
religion
, or when religion has no opinion on the matter, the issue of “compatibility”
never arises.
This suggests a rather facile way in which the “incompatibility” of religion and science can be removed: religion can drop or change its claims. And in truth, religion has done this very thing repeatedly throughout history. Christianity objected to the heliocentric (sun-centered) model of the solar system, but when it was proven true, Christianity relented and accepted it. Christianity objected to the discovery that the earth moved through space, but no sane Christian argues against this fact anymore. Even the pope, as mentioned, conceded that the human body had evolved from ancestral species. Therefore, since religion is an almost infinitely malleable scheme—because it is an entirely imaginary scheme—it can adapt to just about anything that is thrown at it. All it must do is reimagine.

We are still left with the rather frustrating circumstance of yes/no/maybe/ sometimes to our initial question. Yes, religion and science are incompatible when they disagree; no, they are not incompatible when they agree; maybe and sometimes they can be made compatible if religion can absorb scientific facts or modify or reinterpret its beliefs in light of the facts (since beliefs are changeable but facts are not). But a question that resists straightforward answering after all of the analysis we have subjected it to must be a question that is asked wrong—or the wrong question to ask. Since nobody cares about the compatibility of religion and science except those who feel the menace of science for religion when it contradicts religion (in which case it
is
menacing), “compatibility” is not really the issue. The real issue is: In what essential way is science different from religion, and what does this difference mean for their coexistence?

The most fruitful approach to this rephrased question actually comes from the philosophical and historical study of science itself, particularly the famous and influential work of Thomas Kuhn. In
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
, he argues that science is not a simply linear or progressive undertaking leading to greater and greater knowledge and understanding.
²⁹
Rather, he proposes that science proceeds by a revolutionary process of overthrowing one dominant model or theory and replacing it with another, which will be dominant until it, too, is overthrown and replaced. He calls each such model/theory a “paradigm,” which is a specific vision of reality at the grandest scale, our ideas of what kinds of things exist and their qualities and characteristics.