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Science and religion
May. 29th, 2006 12:12 pmWhy would I, an essentially nonreligious person, try to make up something like the Church of Gaia/Earthseed? Well, in order to solve environmental problems and ensure that they stay solved over the long term, we need what Harvey Mudd professor Paul Steinberg calls "the thousand-year institution," a collection of rules, roles, and responsibilities that is capable of surviving into the distant future without major changes in its core principles. And religions are the institutions that have best proven their ability to last thousands of years while maintaining large followings. There are disadvantages, of course--in particular, religions often lack the resilience needed to adapt the implementation of their principles to changing times--but the advantages are too great to be lightly ignored.
Given this, the project of reconciling science and religion gains added importance. So consider this: a good scientist does not deny the posibility of supernatural explanations; s/he merely says "I can't study that" and focuses on theories that meet the standards of testability and falsifiablity. There has always been an "outside" where science cannot yet reach, and there probably always will be.
Of course, the reach of science is constantly expanding; at the moment it extends, with some gaps, to the limits of the observable universe and back in time to a few moments after the Big Bang. But while religious people may see this expansion as "pushing God into the dark corners," the truth is that God has currently been pushed out to about where S/He logically belongs. After all, if God created the Universe, S/He has to be capable of acting from outside it. And given that, there is no reason to deny the possibility that God could sometimes reach in and make the Universe behave in ways inconsistent with its own internal logic, so again, the existence of supernatural phenomena can't be ruled out. In particular, the true nature of human consciousness is not and may never be truly understood.
Nevertheless, science will continue to fight for a more complete understanding--the proponents of "p-brane" theory are already looking for evidence of gravitational forces coming from outside our Universe--and those who value faith will continue to fight back. So do scientists have any equivalent to faith that they can hold out as an olive branch? Well, there is the idea of "sense of wonder," the scientist's awe at the grandeur of the Cosmos and the marvellous order that has arisen spontaneously in the form of galaxies, complex molecules, and most especially life. This provides at least some grounds for the idea that life is precious, an idea that motivates the systems of ethics that lie at the core of most religions.
Given this, the project of reconciling science and religion gains added importance. So consider this: a good scientist does not deny the posibility of supernatural explanations; s/he merely says "I can't study that" and focuses on theories that meet the standards of testability and falsifiablity. There has always been an "outside" where science cannot yet reach, and there probably always will be.
Of course, the reach of science is constantly expanding; at the moment it extends, with some gaps, to the limits of the observable universe and back in time to a few moments after the Big Bang. But while religious people may see this expansion as "pushing God into the dark corners," the truth is that God has currently been pushed out to about where S/He logically belongs. After all, if God created the Universe, S/He has to be capable of acting from outside it. And given that, there is no reason to deny the possibility that God could sometimes reach in and make the Universe behave in ways inconsistent with its own internal logic, so again, the existence of supernatural phenomena can't be ruled out. In particular, the true nature of human consciousness is not and may never be truly understood.
Nevertheless, science will continue to fight for a more complete understanding--the proponents of "p-brane" theory are already looking for evidence of gravitational forces coming from outside our Universe--and those who value faith will continue to fight back. So do scientists have any equivalent to faith that they can hold out as an olive branch? Well, there is the idea of "sense of wonder," the scientist's awe at the grandeur of the Cosmos and the marvellous order that has arisen spontaneously in the form of galaxies, complex molecules, and most especially life. This provides at least some grounds for the idea that life is precious, an idea that motivates the systems of ethics that lie at the core of most religions.
