Apropos our discussion/debates ealier this week in a few threads… I was reading an article on Francis Collins, former head of The Human Genome Project and current Obama appointed head of the National Institutes of Health. It seems he has helped set up The BioLogos Foundation — along with attendant website to help folks navigate issues of faith, science, and reason. There’s even a “Questions” page that provides essay length answers to major questions. I don’t know that I agree with everything he says, but anyone that makes Sam Harris’ teeth hurt is good in my book.
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Faith and Reason — Like Peanut Butter and Chocolate12 comments to Faith and Reason — Like Peanut Butter and ChocolateLeave a Reply |
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Thank you for posting this!
I’ve never understood the dischord between Religion and Science, nor, in a larger sense, between Faith and Reason. Even when I was much younger and humorlessly fanatical, I never got the weird disdain for Science that many of my co-fanatics held. It never made sense to me. The Bible tells us that “The Heavens declare the glory of God,” so how can searching for Exoplanets be a bad thing? Isn’t that just more of God’s glory for us to revel in? Gallileo discovered a few moons that are neither confirmed nor denied in the bible, and are of no theological importance whatsoever, and he gets nearly killed because it conflicts with some stupid numerological interpretation that ISN’T EVEN IN THE BIBLE? I don’t get that. I never did.
On the flip side, I can certainly understand some bad blood on the science side of the equation over treatment like that, but the utter disdain many scientists hold for matters of faith is every bit as ignorand and disheartening.
We are not rational creatures, at least not entirely. This has long been recognized, and much of the history of philosophy has been an attempt to reconcile our divine and animal natures, our rational and irrational sides, if you will. I have to believe that the attempt to put one of these two qualities above the other is a mistake. I think we need them both, in equal measure. Some we need more than the other in particular circumstances, obviously, but on the whole I think they equal out, and I think it is this conflict between rational and irrational that is the actual machinery of our sentience. Yes, God made us sentient, either all at once or eventually, but he made a point of instilling this interior conflict in us for some reason. It must have some value then. No other creature has this conflict, likely not even the angels that some believe we are due to eventually surpass.
We need the rationality because God wants us to learn, to figure things out, to grow, to expand, He does not appear to want us to remain static. At the same time, He obviously wants us to feel things, and at root all emotion is irrational, but even so no one would deny that Love and Faith are the things that make life bearable when all hope is lost, and give us the strength to keep going when an animal would simply lie down and die. Faith and Hope and Love and Belief keep us going, even when we know there is no hope whatsoever, and they touch us even second hand, they allow us to emote, to connect, even with people who’s lives and experiences are far removed from our own. Anyone who doesn’t get a little lump in their throat at the end of Anne Frank’s diary is more rational than I ever want to be. The Irrational keeps us going until the Rational can help us figure out a way to survive, to adapt, eventually to thrive.
Obviously, we need them both and bickering between the two disciplines is counterproductive. On a particularly pissy day, I’ll even venture that such things contradict God’s great plan, whatever that might be.
As Joe Straczynski – athiest – said, “Faith and Reason are the shoes on your feet. You will go much further with both of them together than you ever would with just one of them alone.”
One of the implications of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation is that faith and reason are both affirmed. The Logos, the Eternal Word, became Flesh and dwelt among us. Almost all those heresy disputes that everybody laughs at nowadays were about this very point–the Church rejected all teachings that denied or denigrated the physical.
I am convinced (and I’m not alone) that this is why modern science rose in Christian Europe and nowhere else. When the ancient Greeks looked at the sky, they thought they were looking at a god. Christians (and Jews) looked at the sky and saw a fellow creature, one which might be studied and analyzed without blasphemy.
At the same time, He obviously wants us to feel things, and at root all emotion is irrational…
R3:
I would contend that emotional is not irrational, it is supra-rational, beyond the full quantifiability of reason. Can we diagram an emotion with symbolic logic or reproduce in algorithm? We can’t really describe emotion, except in reference to other emotions or in metaphor, which only make sense to others who can feel.
Ever try to really imagine a being of pure logic? You can’t, because all logic has to first begin with a reason for inquiry. You have to have something outside of logic to begin using it. Equally, you can not quite imagine a being of pure emotion, as it would lack the faculty to perceive or conceive to anything, including emotion.
Emotions themselves have an internal consistency, when disciplined by logic. Their necessity can also be logically demonstrated, as you partly show (it has been said that Existentialism arose due to the “unpaid debts” of philosophy, which had become overly cerebral). But emotions themselves are not something that can be reduced to a mathematical proof. When not disciplined by logic, they become senseless and self-destructive. Logic without motive would be pure potentiality, without actuality. In the end, they are separate, but inseparable.
correction: emotion is not irrational
I am convinced (and I’m not alone) that this is why modern science rose in Christian Europe and nowhere else.
A growing consensus in Medieval scholarship would back you up on that. Not only did natural philosophy in Europe progress farther than anywhere else due to Theistic rationalism, but the establishment of the modern university system in the 12th century allowed for the institutionalization of professional research and full time inquiry.
Most of the early science community were Christian in faith. A few are: Louis Pasteur, William Kirby, Robert Boyle, Charles Bell, Johann Kepler, Isaac Newton, George Washington Carver, and there are many more. They may not have been outright Christians, but did honor God as the Creator.
Many of today’s science community tries very hard to discount anything regarding creation and seems to go straight to the evolutionary tack which to my mind is much more difficult to believe.
A fairly recent poll that popped up in Nature in the last few years, as a sequel to a poll they ran 20 years prior to it, showed about an even split of 40/40 between people who believed in God and people who didn’t, with about 20 who weren’t sure. The numbers were almost exactly the same in the prior study.
I’ve heard — I think from Collins — that over a quarter of the faculty of CalTech — for example — are Christians. A lot of scientists are believers. The rate goes way up in the medical sciences.
“When Moses writes that God created heaven and earth and whatever is in them in six days, then let this period continue to have been six days, and do not venture to devise any comment according to which six days were one day. But, if you cannot understand how this could have been done in six days, then grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being more learned than you are.”
In the Diversity class that I had to take this summer, we had to randomly group up with people and choose one of the topics that were given us (which I’ve mentioned on here). I got together with 3 out of 4 like-minded individuals to create a powerpoint on why religion and intelligent design should be taught in public schools. In all of these education courses they drum it into your head that you need to embrace different cultures, since your students come from various walks of life. So I focused my part of the powerpoint presentation to present Michael Behe’s argument for ID and the science behind it. After, I reminded everyone that we’ve been told to embrace and respect people’s cultures, and since religion shapes culture, we’re doing the kids a disservice in not presenting multiple religious views on the origin of mankind. So, the bottom line was, teach Darwinism in conjunction with ID science, along with examples of religious views on our origins. I had a few teachers give me a standing ovation so there’s hope yet.
Science is just a means to explain and figure out God’s work. It’s how we prove and make sense of it all, though we still need much work in that department. I ask students each year to raise their hands if they go to church, and I usually have 99-100% that do. And it’s not just my curiosity, because when talking about various community leaders, our Social Studies book includes the picture of a priest. The priest in our textbook is a Catholic priest, who happens to be Asian. So when I point to the picture and ask who he is and what do they think he does, I always have at least one kid who says that he’s a Kung-Fu guy.
Kung-Fu guy, hilarious Matt!
David: Soooooooo you’re saying that people have a rational side and an even more rational side, then?
Lars: Religious outlook is one of the things that shapes scientific outlook, definitely, but it’s just one of several factors. Science arose and was quite developed in China, for instance, and was centuries ahead of ‘us’ for a long time. Ultimately they couldn’t keep up with european advances, but there were other things driving the advances – technological competition between european countries, and large noble class with lots of money to blow on various newfangled geegaws, which drove research. But most of all, these things were driven by the discovery of the New World, which suddenly made western Europe filthy stinking rich and transformed half the continent from a bunch of ignorant hillbillies that eastern Europe never invited to parties in to the dominant force in the world.
So in large part, it’s luck.
I do TOTALLY agree that the Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition does tend to favor a more analytical outlook. I’ve always suspected this is tied to the surprising tolerance God has in the bible for people arguing with Him, and the fact that we clearly matter to Him (Both because He says so, and because His putting up with arguments from us rather than just wiping us out tend to support the idea that we have some value to Him.) If you know you’re loved, or at least tolerated, you feel more secure, and you’re more likely to go exploring than is someone who’s in fear for his/her life all the time.