Some questions are easy to ask, and
also easy to answer. Take for example,
peanut butter and chocolate. Are they
compatible? The answer is a resounding
yes, of course. Or, just as easily,
enriched uranium and unprotected human tissue?
That one gets you a resounding no.
Other questions are easy to ask, but quite hard (or even impossible) to
answer. Do you see red as the same color
that I do? Not a clue. What happened before the Big Bang? Sounds pretty straightforward, right? It turns out that this might not even be a
valid question, much less admit of a sensible answer. Other questions, like the compatibility of
science and religion, really come down to a proper definition of terms. As with so many things, a lot turns on what
we mean when we say things like “science,” “compatible,” and “religion.” So let’s take a look at what this question is
really asking, and then decide what we’ll accept as an answer.
First of all, let’s get the easy stuff out of the way. If you’re not interested in getting too deep,
or you can’t really be bothered to think about things beyond the surface
details, let me just go right ahead and answer the question for you. Are science and religion compatible? Yes, and you need look no further than
Francis Collins (or any other religious scientist) for proof. Collins is a scientist, he is a very
religious man, and he has not yet (to my knowledge) spontaneously
combusted. He, and others like him, are
walking, talking examples of the apparent compatibility of science and
religion. Easy, right? You can now safely go back to church, safe in
the knowledge that your faith can be reconciled with the findings of modern
science.
But for those of you interested in looking a little deeper
down the rabbit hole, let’s pause for a moment and see what our dear Mr.
Francis has actually accomplished for us.
What he seems to represent is compatibility between two different areas
of human endeavor, those of religion and science. But he has only accomplished this feat by
accepting a very flimsy definition of “compatible.” If by “compatible” one means to say that two
things are compatible if they can occur simultaneously in the same space,
context, frame of reference, or head of a person, then clearly Mr. Collins
qualifies. But by this definition,
enriched uranium and unprotected human tissue enjoy the same level of
compatibility. Both items are clearly
able to occupy the same space, regardless of the harm that one will surely do
the other. Another good example would be
the compatibility enjoyed by married adulterers. Is committed marriage compatible with
adultery? Since there seems to be no
shortage of persons who manage to be married while simultaneously engaging in
adultery, the answer must be yes. There
is apparently enough room in the minds of these people to simultaneously hold
the thoughts “I am married” and “I am having an affair” without an insurmountable
level of cognitive dissonance. And of
course we could list countless examples of just this type of minimalist
compatibility, from the mundane to the truly extraordinary. So clearly we must mean something more when
we say that two things are compatible.
What we really mean is, the two things in question don’t have
conflicting interests, they share common goals or outcomes, they complement
each other in some way, they are harmonious, etc. This deeper meaning of compatibility is what
people like Francis Collins would like us to believe the relationship is like
between science and religion. Not just
capable of coexistence, but truly harmonious, without conflict.
This would be a good time to point out that there is more
than one way to have compatibility between two different things. One way is to reconcile the two, as any good accommodationist
will tell you has already been done. The other is to decide that there is nothing
to reconcile, by virtue of the two things in question having absolutely nothing
to do with each other. This second route
is that of NOMA, or non-overlapping magisteria.
Famously popularized by the late Stephen J. Gould, this tactic simply
mandated that the realms (or magisteria) of science and religion simply didn't overlap. Science tells us how the
heavens go, and religion tells us how to go to heaven. It’s like deciding that the genres of science
fiction and romance can’t be in conflict since they exist in different magisteria. One side gets spaceships and aliens, the
other side gets swashbucklers and moonlit walks on the beach, and never the
twain shall meet. Easy, right?
But here is where we run into the second problematic term of
our initial question, that of “religion.”
Let’s give religion a broad definition, something like “a belief system
involving some combination of tradition, the supernatural, and revealed
knowledge.” But it’s not like there’s
just one religion, despite what some Southern Baptist fundamentalists would like
you to believe. When Gould brokered him
infamous peace treaty between the realms of science and religion, his
rose-colored glasses must have been firmly seated in place. I can almost see him, gazing off into a
future where scholarly theologians shepherded their flocks with hard-won moral
instruction gleaned from the brittle pages of some ancient religious text,
never daring to tread into areas that might come into conflict with the
empirical sciences. Maybe there are
religions out there might fit this pie-in-the-sky vision, but to say that they
are few and far in between would be an epic understatement. Imagine a religion that concerned itself only
with “spiritual, ethical, and moral” matters, deferring to the findings of
science, never preferring revealed knowledge to peer-reviewed findings,
refusing to accept extraordinary claims of the supernatural without equally
extraordinary evidence, never attempting to legislate their religious views on
others, ready to change cherished beliefs and traditions when they had been
shown to be false. Can you imagine such
a religion? If so, that is the kind of
religion that Gould envisioned as being compatible with science.
Now ask yourself, what sort of religious person would be
satisfied with such a religion? If you’re
taking your poll in Tennessee, or any part of the South, the answer would be
precious few. Even a religion that only
concerned itself with matters of morality would find itself increasingly
crowded out by science, since huge inroads are being made into the biological
underpinnings of the brain. Once we
understand (and can manipulate) the mechanics of morality, what role will be
left for religion? No, NOMA is merely a
holding action against the stunning success of science, an attempt to wall off
some small portion of human endeavor as “sacred.” The reality is that science has been biting
off chunks of religion’s magesteria for hundreds of years now, and religion
knows it. In the never-ending contest to
provide better and better explanations for the world we see around us, science
is winning, and winning big.
But what is “science,” in the context of our initial
question? Is it just people with lots of
letters behind their name, busily shuffling test tubes and launching telescopes
into orbit? Is it only the “hard”
sciences, like genetics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, physics, or engineering? Not necessarily. For our purposes, a much broader definition
of science will do just fine. We could
define it as “rational and empirical investigation, coupled with a skeptical
approach towards facts.” So with this definition
of science, just how compatible is Francis Collin’s day job with his weekend
activities? Just how much skepticism can
something like the crucifixion of Jesus stand up to? How compatible is a belief system involving the
supernatural with a scientific mindset?
Since I've already acknowledged that there are many
different forms of religion, and since I've already been picking on Francis
Collins, let’s just keep on with Christianity as our test subject for
scientific compatibility. The first
thing to notice is how quickly most religious people will point out the improbability
of other religions actually being true. Christians
will go on and on about how perfectly apparent it is that God created the
universe (maybe even in six days,) breathed life into non-living matter, inserted
an immortal soul into every person, destroyed the earth in a worldwide flood,
sent his son to earth to serve as a human sacrifice to atone for sin, and that
he now sits in Heaven where he watches each and every one us every single day—all
while orchestrating a Master Plan for us, where we all have a divinely mandated
purpose that may or may not include violent death and dismemberment at any
given time. And if we somehow manage to
successfully act out our part of this Plan, we will spend an eternity in
paradise singing God’s praises. If we
fall short, however, we can look forward to an eternity of unimaginable torment
in a lake of fire, also lovingly prepared by God. Not a shred of evidence is presented to back
up these extravagant claims, apart from a few ancient manuscripts handed down
from a time of pre-scientific barbarism.
But the same Christian will have no trouble at all dismissing something
as obviously ludicrous as an elephant-headed god, or the idea that the universe
was woven together by a deity from threads of chaos, or even a whole panoply of
gods who live in a mansion on a mountaintop.
Those things are just silly, and where’s the proof? What, all you have is just some collection of
old stories? Suddenly skepticism is the
easiest thing in the world, and rightly so.
But somehow when the religion in question is held by a majority of one’s
peers, and the social pressure for conformity is high, skepticism is hard to
come by.
Obviously, the vast majority of believers did not arrive at
their religious beliefs as the end result of some process of skeptical
evaluation. Certainly Francis Collins
did not. Like many believers, his
journey was one of emotional resonance that had little or nothing to do with facts,
evidence, or rationality. Religion
provides comfort and easy answers for billions of people, in a way that science
has a hard time competing with. Somehow,
the knowledge that we are the latest link in an unbroken chain of evolved life
stretching back billions of years into the past lacks the same emotional
connection provided by many of the world’s religions. One solution to this problem is to (you
guessed it) attempt to make science “compatible” with religion. By liberally interpreting both religion and
science, you can come up with a religion that isn't threatened by science and a
science that doesn't threaten religion. On the contrary, you can simply attribute all
the wondrous discoveries of science to the mysterious workings of some god or
other. Has science piled up an
overwhelming amount of evidence that evolution is a fact? No worries, just insist that evolution is the
mechanism that God chose to bring about humans.
Has science shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the universe is over 14
billion years old? No biggie, just
interpret the book of Genesis as a metaphor.
If a religious believer is convinced of the truth of their beliefs, they
can be endlessly creative in the reinterpretation of those beliefs to fit the
present facts. In this delicious display
of irony, we can trace the evolution of religious belief as it has been forced
to adapt in the face of a relentless assault by science.
So, how should we answer the question: are science and religion
compatible? If we define our terms in
such a way as to do justice to both concepts, the only honest answer has to be
no. There is no scientific support for
the supernatural (a necessary component of any religion that we would recognize
as such,) and religion has continually given ground in the face of scientific
advances. To be clear, science can never
rule out supernatural claims. But then
again, science doesn’t rule out anything.
It merely makes provisional conclusions based on the preponderance of
evidence. And based on the evidence,
there is no reason to believe that religion is anything more than an outdated
explanatory model that has outlived its usefulness. A politically powerful, socially acceptable,
longstanding explanatory model, yes. But
none of these attributes attest to whether or not religion has anything to say
that has any scientific validity, or whether or not science and religion can
enjoy anything other than proximity—not compatibility.
