Posted by Karl Giberson has a new column up at the Huffington Post.
Jerry Coyne and I had an interesting exchange yesterday that will appear in a brief video on USA Today’s website at some point. The question related to the compatibility of science and religion. Can one accept the modern scientific view of the world and still hold to anything resembling a traditional belief in God?
My answer to this question is “yes, of course,” for I cannot see my way to clear to embrace either of the two alternatives — a fundamentalist religion prepared to reject science, or a pure scientism that denies the reality of anything beyond what science can discover. But my position seems precarious to me in many ways, since I am getting shot at so vigorously by both sides.
Getting shot at? Spare us the melodrama. Your arguments are being criticized. On blogs. No one is shooting at you, not even metaphorically.
Now let us get down to business.
That second paragraph is a bit strange. The confident answer “Yes, of course” does not seem well justified merely by expressing distaste for the other two options. I would have thought that “a traditional belief in God” refers to something more than merely believing in something “beyond what science can discover.” The term “traditional” typically means that God has certain attributes and certain attitudes towards his creation. It is not belief in God per se that science challenges (though I do think a thorough understanding of science tends to make God seem irrelevant and distant). It is the notion of an all-loving God who specifically created humans in His image that becomes difficult to defend in the light of modern science.
But the real action occurs later: The “comparison” referred to in the first sentence below is between science and young-Earth creationism.
But I don’t think this comparison is fair. Juxtaposing “empirical science” with “revealed religion” in this particular way seems unbalanced. Mohler’s views have broad popular appeal, to be sure, but they don’t represent the best in Christian thinking. Few Catholics or Anglicans, for example, would agree with him. If we want to make a comparison with “populist” religion, we should use “populist” science. The great masses of religious “faithful” should be juxtaposed with the great masses of people who “believe” in science but are not leading professionals. What do you suppose “science” would look like, were it defined by these “believers”? The physics would be Aristotelian; astrology and aliens would be accepted as real; General Relativity would be unknown; quantum mechanics would be perceived as a way to influence the world with your mind, as we occasionally read on these blogs.
Giberson’s list is a bit strange in some ways (most people hold Aristotelian views of physics? Really?) but I accept his general point that many people who consider themselves big supporters of science nonetheless hold strange ideas about what it says.
But there is an enormous difference between people’s erroneous views of science and what Giberson believes are inferior forms of Christian faith. The difference is that there is a clear fact of the matter about what science says, but there is no fact of the matter regarding the proper balance between science and religion.
The person who thinks that astrology is well-supported by scientific evidence, or who thinks that quantum mechanics is a way to control nature with your mind, is simply mistaken about questions of fact. Science is what it is, and you either understand it or you don’t. Certainly there can be disagreements about the proper interpretation of evidence, but no such subtle considerations are really at issue in the sorts of popular misconceptions Giberson is describing.
That is quite different from the situation with young-Earth creationists. They do tend to be ignorant of relevant scientific facts, but that is not the root of the problem. Instead the problem is the relative weights they put on science and revelation as sources of evidence. Tell them that nearly all scientists accept evolution and they reply, “So much the worse for science!” The Bible is a source of evidence that trumps anything that science says.
You may deplore that way of looking at things, but on what basis do you say that it is wrong? What is the fact of the matter regarding the proper evidential balance between science and revelation?
Nor does it help to insist that the YEC’s are misinterpreting the Bible, because there is no clear fact of the matter regarding what the Bible means. There is no clear agreement even over the hermeneutical principles to use in interpreting the Bible. For YEC’s the main principles are inerrancy and perspicuity, two ideas with long histories in Christian theology. Given those principles it is not hard to see how they arrive at the conclusions they do. You may not like those principles, but on what basis do you say they are the wrong ones to apply?
Giberson continues:
Here is the kicker: all these people would have had far more education in science than the typical religious believer has in theology. Science, as “lived and practiced by real people” who “believe” it, is quite different from the science promoted by the intellectuals in this conversation.
The observations of science do indeed trump revealed truth about the world. Just ask Galileo. But empirical science also trumps other empirical science. Einstein supplanted Newton. This did not undermine the scientific enterprise, however, even though it showed that the science of that time was in error.
In the same way, modern theology has replaced traditional theology. The mere fact that old-fashioned ideas persist does not mean that they can be legitimately used in an argument that religion is incompatible with science.
Once again, it is a poor comparison. One scientific theory supplants another by the earnest application of more science. It is in the nature of scientific investigation that we get better and better approximations to reality, so we expect ideas to change over time. Einstein supplanted Newton by applying standard scientific methods in new and innovative ways. We can say in a very precise, quantitative way why Einstein’s ideas are better than Newton’s.
That is not at all the case in theology. The “modern theology” Giberson believes has supplanted the “traditional theology” of the masses did not win out among the intelligentsia by the earnest application of theological principles. Instead, researchers working outside the confines of Christian theology made new discoveries, which forced theology either to accommodate them or risk looking obscurantist and silly.
Giberson is very blunt that science has exclusive reign over the natural world, but that is not at all the traditional view of the relationship between science and theology. Historian David Lindberg, in his contribution to the book Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion, puts it this way:
In Augustine’s influential view, then, knowledge of the things of this world is not a legitimate end in itself, but as a means to other ends it is indispensable. The classical sciences must accept a subordinate position as the handmaiden of theology and religion — the temporal serving the eternal. The knowledge contained in the classical sciences is not to be loved, but it may legitimately be used. This attitude toward scientific knowledge came to prevail throughout the Middle Ages and survived well into the modern period.
Of course, that is precisely the view held by modern creationists, but most people argue that they absolutely undermine the scientific enterprise by holding it. If the spectacle of theology having to retreat in the face of advancing scientific knowledge does not undermine the enterprise, then it is hard to imagine what does.
Giberson’s final remark is also odd. The claim has never been that all forms of religion are incompatible with everything about science. Instead you have certain aspects of science conflicting with certain forms of religion. At the extremes the question is easy. YEC is flatly contradicted by science. From the other side there are very theologically liberal forms of Christianity that have little use for notions of doctrine and miracles and inerrant scriptures, and these forms of religion have no problem accepting modern science. Then there is a large middle ground where science poses serious challenges to certain traditional beliefs, but perhaps those challenges can be overcome with sufficient imagination.
Giberson concludes with:
If “science” is allowed to toss its historical baggage overboard when its best informed leaders decide to do so, even though the ideas continue to circulate on main street, then surely religion can do the same.
Not surely at all, for reasons we have already discussed.
For many people, especially those coming from an Evangelical background, the whole point of theology is that it does not change. It is a rock on which you can build your life. In our natural state our minds are so corrupted by sin that we need an infallible guide to keep us anchored, lest our natural inclinations take us off in disastrous directions. The Bible specifically warns about people who, thinking they were wise, actually were like fools.
If theology must change every time scientists achieve consensus on something, then what good is it? If it is only allowed to make assertions about things that are completely divorced from any empirical consequences in the world, then how can we ever be confident that any of it is right? In what sense is it an “ology” at all?
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