“Ending the War between Science and Religion: Beyond Either / Or”
by Graham Campbell
Science without religion is lame, Religion without science is blind. -Albert Einstein.
I have always felt the conflict between science and religion was puzzling, wasteful, and unnecessary. It has gone on for far too long and squandered too much energy of believing Christians. But it has been very successful at making religious people look like they have not emerged from the dark ages.
It helps to see that it arises mostly from an inaccurate view of the Bible as an inerrant book of historical fact which is to be believed exactly as written rather than the statement of a community of faith containing spiritual and existential truth.
Transpersonal philosopher Ken Wilber, in his book “A Brief History of Everything,” gives a reasonably good introductory explanation of how this came to be and why it was originally a necessary thing. In the Medieval Ages, religion, art, science, literature, politics, morality, and law were all merged into a big mush. In Europe, every painting had to have religious symbols. During the Inquisition, people were tried for treason, not heresy. A separation was needed so that all fields could grow unimpeded. Science needed to advance independently without interference from the Church to develop the amazing medical care we now have. Democracy needed the freedom of thought and speech we now consider natural. Divinely appointed monarchs were not openly spoken of negatively. And Feminism needed freedom from religious-supported patriarchy.
The problem is that the medieval solution was a long-term disaster. Science was given priority in the realms of the physical and the body, and religion was given authority in the realms of soul and spiritual matters. But the separation became a competitive dissociation. God became a god of the edges, corners, and boundaries constantly invaded and colonized by science and rationalism. The cosmos was reduced to a compilation of physical laws. Religion became about the distant God who was in charge somewhere else, on a distant throne, governing something mysterious thing called the soul.
Christianity and most of the major religions fought a rear-guard battle, constantly protecting its ever-shrinking territory. Most importantly, it developed its “either / or” strategy. People had to make the choice to be either a faithful believer or a rational scientist. People of faith became like the British Army in WWII, trapped at Dunkirk, surrounded by enemies on all sides waiting for rescue back to England. For Christians, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, you proved your faith by choosing the Bible or science, either Darwin and Evolution or Geneses, and seven days of creation. The line was drawn in the sand, and the Bible was to be believed every word exactly as written, inerrant and infallible, and Christians were to surrender their powers of reasoning, logic, and reflection.
We need a new model that scraps the either /or choices, a cooperative model leaving room for both. A model that sees how science tells us important things about the “how” of God’s creation, and spiritual truth basks in the glory of the “why.” Physicists, with their “Big Bang Theory,” when compared to Geneses, present a remarkably compatible picture of the “how” of creation. They simply see it as a much vaster complex and older cosmos than the biblical writers could possibly imagine. And yet, the Biblical writers were remarkably close to the image gained in evolution. Creation is coherent and autonomous, as seen in what physicists call the “Laws of Physics.” From the first nano-second of the Big Bang, creation was imbued with those laws by the Creator. Incidentally, many physicists are also learning that there are situations in which those laws don’t fit. Like the Biblical writers, they still have much to learn about God’s creation.
Science has always moved through a process of trial and error, hypothesis and new synthesis, proving and disproving. It has evolved from the physics of Newton to Einstein and now to Quantum physics which does not disprove Newton but sees the limits of his view. And both have evolved from mistaken idea that the sun revolves around the Earth, which was once a universally accepted fact by both Christianity and science. Both have evolved from that mistake.
The cooperative model does not think that science can or should try to prove God’s existence. That is not its job. But it does show us a cosmos of gigantic proportions and incredible age. People of faith do not need to prove their faith by denying our God-given powers of reasoning, research and the ability to evolve in our faith. Evangelicals see only the option for either/or. Progressives see options for cooperation and growth. Progressives see this as our ability to be born again with a new vision and insight into the Great Mystery of faith.
This cooperative approach impacts my faith in several ways. Including, I do not believe that the cosmos was created in 180 hours (seven days). I do believe that it was created in an orderly, incredibly long process that got us to where we are today. I also believe that God was the process that heated up the Cosmic Pressure Cooker until it blew apart. In addition, I also don’t believe that in the time of Noah, God destroyed every person and animal except for those on his ark. But I do acknowledge that there seems to be archeological evidence for some sort of cataclysm at that time which believers explained (much like the Greeks) as the wrath of a vengeful God. And, in the light of the ministry of Jesus, “The Heart of God,” I no longer believe in a vengeful God.
When we let go of the false choice of either /or, we can believe wholeheartedly in God and Jesus as proclaimed in the Bible and take in information that arises from different sources that the Creator also provides for us.
RESOURCES:
Ken Wilber. A Brief History of Everything.
Gerald Schroder. The Science of God: The convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom.
Michio Kaku. Parallel Worlds.
Hans Kung. The Beginning of All Things: Science and Religion.
