There is an interesting book review by John Farrell on the Commonweal site. The title of the article is "The Conflict Continues". The book being reviewed is On Faith and Science, by Edward J. Larson and Michael Ruse.
From the article:
"Long before the notorious trial of Galileo, the great twelfth-century
philosopher and physician Ibn Rushd (Averroës) was banished from his
home in Cordoba and saw all of his books banned and burned by the
Islamic religious authorities, who denounced his belief in the existence
of causality in the natural order—a causality he considered independent
of God’s direct action in the world. .... the clerics of Muslim Spain feared that, on their own, human reason, logic, and science could possess a power that threatened to make God seem unnecessary."
"That fear remains widespread today among religious believers of all
faiths—particularly so in the United States, where, for example,
opposition to belief in evolution remains very high. But it has haunted
the debate over the tension between religion and science for centuries."
"....In the view of Larson and Ruse, the longstanding debate has been ill
served by the so-called conflict model that the Galileo case epitomizes,
and their aim in this book is to argue that the relationship between
science and religion is more complex than any notion of either conflict
or simplistic complementarity allows."
"...In its nine chapters On Faith and Science ranges through the
history of science and philosophy, singling out the discoveries that had
particular impact on religious doctrine over the past thousand years of
Christian and, to a lesser extent, Jewish and Muslim culture. At the
outset of the book, the authors pick up where Ibn Rushd left off, with
the idea of independent laws of nature—or, as the Scholastics referred
to it, the doctrine of secondary causes, the primary cause being God. "
The church has long taught that faith and science, properly understood, cannot contradict each other. The controversy lies in that little phrase, "properly understood".
The article poses the question; "What about humanity’s own origin—and the theological doctrines associated with it, chiefly Original Sin and The Fall?"
I have my own theory about original sin, which I may discuss in the comments.
I would be interested in others' reflections on the subject of faith and reason.
I have always thought the conflict between science and religion has been overdone.
ReplyDeleteThere is some conflict because science and religion both try to explain as much of the world as they can by their disciplines. Sometimes that can result in specific explanations that conflict. More often however the conflict is more vague and general, just the fear that the explanations of other disciplines will threaten the authority of one's own discipline.
A great number of the founders of both psychology and sociology were critical of religion. When I got my doctorate in the seventies religion was not thought of very highly in either discipline. However all that has changed. The study of religion by both psychologists and sociologists is thriving. More and more the positive aspects of religion are being appreciated.
At the 2009 American Psychological Association meeting I presented a paper on the relationship of various concepts of capital (human, social, cultural) in relationship to religion using the Little Rock Bible study model as an exemplar (it emphasizes person, small group and large groups exercises which parallel the forms of capital.
I was one of many presenters in the religion and spirituality tracks. I gave my presentation as a poster session which gave me about an hour and a half to talk to various people, as they looked at my charts and picked up a copy of my paper. There were people who were interested in my theory (mostly from Great Britain where there is more communication across disciplines, but also many people who were practicing psychologist incorporating spirituality into their therapy, and even some psychologists who ran bible study groups, and talked about their own religious experiences.
Jack, your topic sounds really interesting. I would read your paper, by chance is it available on the Internet?
DeleteJim,
DeleteNot available on internet. But I think I have your e-mail from the transition. Will send you a copy as a word document.
I have always thought that God's creation is one of his primary channels of revelation. We are endowed with senses and the faculty to reason in order to understand and appreciate what God has revealed to us. Thus, the physical sciences do not conflict with our faith.
ReplyDeleteI believe that key phrase "properly understood" refers to biblical interpretation. Interpretation that relies on a literal understanding of the text as a guide to science, soon will lead the reader astray. Truth can be found in many different ways in the bible.
The biblical account of the Fall strikes me as mythical. Yet the notion of the Fall resonates with me as capturing something that is profoundly true: that humans fall short of their promise, and that the root cause of this falling short is sin.
"I have always thought that God's creation is one of his primary channels of revelation." Me too, Jim. I think of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem, "God's Grandeur", and another one by Joseph Mary Plunkett,
Delete"I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies..."
"The biblical account of the Fall strikes me as mythical." Seems that way to me, also. But some people would accuse one of heresy for even suggesting such a thing. I believe in original sin (as someone said, there's plenty of empirical evidence). I just don't believe in Eden or an original state of innocence. Kind of hard to fall when we were already flat on the ground. My theory about original sin is that it was a feature, not a bug. The very things that lead us into moral failings; greed, concupiscence, competitiveness, tribalism, and more, are the things which enabled our survival until we evolved far enough to have moral agency. Trouble is, once we attained the use of reason, so to speak, we did not abandon these former instincts. So not having been kicked out of a literal Eden in no way negated our need for a Savior. I think of the words of the Exsultet, " “O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!”
DeleteI also thought of "O happy fault" when I was halfway through your comment. But I see you beat me to it.
DeleteThe problem with a materialistic view of evolution is that it posits that everything about humanity is "up and to the right". We've evolved opposable thumbs, increased cranial capacity, upright stance; we've developed cool technologies, complex social structures, etc. Everything just keeps getting better and better. If we just keep getting smarter and working harder, we'll fix everything. Everything!
Christianity (and Judaism?) is that awkward person clearing his throat and tentatively raising his hand from the back third of the class mumbling, "Um, but what about ...?"
There is a quote from Lord of the Rings that reflects a bit on what I tried to express about the Fall in my previous comment. As no itch to quote from LoTR ever should go unscratched, here it is. As I expect each you have read it a dozen times or more, as I have, there is no need to provide any plot context.
ReplyDelete"That [Prince Imrahil] is a fair lord and a great captain of men," said Legolas. "If Gondor has such men still in these days of fading, great must have been its glory in the days of its rising."
And doubtless the good stone-work is the older and was wrought in the first building," said Gimli. "It is ever so with the things that Men begin: there is a frost in Spring, or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise."
Yet seldom do they fail of their seed," said Legolas. "And that will lie in the dust and rot to spring up again in times and places unlooked-for. The deeds of Men will outlast us, Gimli."
"And yet come to naught in the end but might-have-beens, I guess," said the Dwarf.
"To that the Elves know not the answer," said Legolas.
The relationship or conflict between Religion and Science or faith and science is complex and changing, at least for me. For some, it’s simple. Science is advanced and religion backward and obsolete. But, I’ve been sort of involved with physical science for most of my life and have loved it from the age of six, at least. It can be fun, and certainly keeps one busy and “off the street”, is prestigious in modern society, and some people center their whole lives on it. But looking at it critically in a philosophical mode, I don’t see how it can, if taken purely and exclusively, provide a source of meaning in the sense of a source of ethics or desire to act. I usually use the example of someone jumping off a ten story building. Science can give you a close number on the speed of impact, the rapid deceleration causing the physical limits of the human body to be exceeded to the point of destruction and death. But it doesn’t have a thing to say about whether or not the individual should jump. Most scientists of the scientism type would say they shouldn’t unless they are facing a cruel terminal disease. But they are cheating. These concepts do not come from scientific research. Science has nothing to say on this. Richard Dawkins, thoroughgoing determinist that he is, believes criminals and sociopaths are not guilty but the sum of their atoms and maybe the atoms can be rearranged to make them “nice”. But science say nothing about whether it is even wrong for them to be so or even why we shouldn’t rearrange the atoms of “nice people” to become sociopaths. Science tells us that burning fossil fuels will make the lives of our descendants “nasty, brutish and short”. But science has nothing to the people who can accept this outcome and say “so what, let’s have a carbon party and screw people who don’t even exist yet”.
ReplyDeleteFor my money, this shows that without the dimension of religion, the concepts and cognitive strategies of science can only generate a meaningless nightmare world. The scientistic devotees at the Science March I attended never seemed to acknowledge that the crisis would not have existed in the first place but for the advances of science.
Now for creation of the cosmos. I am not a deist. I don’t believe that God created the world and then let go. If God did this, then existence would immediately cease. The Ground of Being is always now, sustaining what is. Things don’t get created and then coast. They are not on their own. God’s action is at right angles to time and space and existence, from an entirely different direction, like maybe eternity?
Causality. Determinism, even in its most stringent, must admit leakage. You cannot predict the present state of the universe in detail based on the early state of the universe. This means we are somewhat decoupled from hard causality. How can this be? Deterministic chaos, sometimes called the “Butterfly Effect”, allows that minor perturbations propagate into macroscopic events like hurricanes. Certain people die and survive, changing the whole course of human history. But before the butterfly in China flaps its wings, there are also quantum variations, and these are unpredictable and not related stringently to the conditions of the Big Bang. Does this also mean that creation is contemporaneous and ongoing? I think so. I’d pursue this further, but my brain just fried.
I have some reflections on the consciousness, mind and the AI thing but I’ll try later. Also, evolution, is it as meaningless as Dawkins makes it sound even if God isn’t actually pushing specific atoms around?
I was pretty critical of First Things in a recent post. Here is an article from 2005 I recall reading when that magazine was more on its game than it is now. Its author, Michael Behe, is known to be a proponent of Intelligent Design. The article is not so much a manifesto of his theory as a caution of how social pressures operate in the scientific community, in particular the pressure to be a thoroughgoing materialist.
Deletehttps://www.firstthings.com/article/2005/12/scientific-orthodoxies
"I am not a deist. I don’t believe that God created the world and then let go. If God did this, then existence would immediately cease. The Ground of Being is always now, sustaining what is. Things don’t get created and then coast. They are not on their own." Well put, Stanley. I'm not a Deist either. Not sure what I am. "Intelligent Design" gets roundly dissed for being "creationism lite". But if one believes in God at all, one surely believes that He is intelligent. And if intelligent, He must have had a design in causing the universe and all its inhabitants. So I guess I am a believer in intelligent design. I don't think of God as the ultimate Helicopter Parent, micromanaging creation. I believe that he doesn't mind tangents, side trips, and serendipity. That He is both transcendent and immanent. Agree with you that creation is both contemporaneous and ongoing.
DeleteWhen I was a lad, my future best man (pre-law) and I were drinking coffee in the student union when we were joined by an engineering student of our acquaintance. Somehow talk got around to the scene in which the turtle crosses the road in The Grapes of Wrath, and the engineer-to-be held forth for a good five minutes on the truth and beauty of that chapter. When he left, my FBM said, "Why can't we get as much out of engineering as he just got out of Steinbeck?" The question persisted. It cleared and plowed my field for C.P Snow's "two cultures" theory.
ReplyDeleteI know this: When Romeo descries the "light through yonder window" as Juliet he is making a statement that millions of people recognize as truth. It is not scientific truth. It is not even a particularly poetic truth ("the rainbow grows and grows..." would be a better example of that). It may not even be a theological truth (but if you've read John of the Cross who's to say?). But any man who was ever in Romeo's boots could call you a liar if you denied the truth of it.
Science has presented us, very belatedly, with the fourth dimension, but most scientists think there are other still undiscovered dimensions. (Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis beat science to the Fifth Dimension, but that is another kind of knowing.) I don't think we (scientists ortheologians) are even knocking on the door of God's dimension. Aquinas didn't think so either. Most of the time we, even scientists, are using language metaphorically. That's all of the time with theologians.
Of tangential interest. Listened to Terry Gross interview Kate Bowler, prof of divinity and cancer patient, talk about her book, "Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved."
ReplyDeleteThe conversation is a nice exploration of what happens when a scientific reality (chronic cancer) messes up your ideas about what you think your place in the world is or what you think you know about the divine.
It explores what questions science can/cannot answer. And also what theology can/cannot answer.
Very moving and honest segment: https://www.npr.org/2018/02/12/585066841/a-stage-4-cancer-patient-shares-the-pain-and-clarity-of-living-scan-to-scan
Thanks for sharing that link, Jean. Yes it is very moving. And challenging. I liked what she said about the Mennonites' approach; I think it is similar in a lot of way to the Catholic philosophy. Though we have our versions of the Prosperity Gospel too. Last Sunday's gospel reading dealt with the healing of a leper. Our pastor gave a good homily, emphasizing how lepers were "othered" back in that day. Sometimes we still "other" those with incurable illnesses. It is hard to know how to support someone going through a life-threatening illness; steering a path between Pollyanna-ism and what my mother called crape-hanging.
DeleteYes, I was struck by the Mennonite idea that life is grim/beautiful as being quite close to Catholicism.
DeleteBowler talked about people who kept looking for reasons why she, specifically, was sick--lack of faith, poor diet, etc. In my experience, these people are looking for ways to blame you for getting cancer so they don't have to feel sorry for you.
In Bible times, lepers were seen as sinners and criminals. We tend to think it's because people then didn't understand science and illness. But I'm not sure they weren't just like us--looking for a way to get out of having to deal with the awful.
Intelligent Design as promoted by the Discovery Institute folks (such as Michael Behe) is pseudoscience. Stephen Barr takes it apart in his First Things article titled The End of Intelligent Design?
ReplyDeleteDavid, many thanks for that Stephen Barr article, which I had not seen before. I love the consonance he finds between the insights of the ancient believers and the advances of science. It brought to mind this hymn text by Isaac Watts:
DeleteI sing the mighty pow’r of God,
that made the mountains rise,
That spread the flowing seas abroad,
and built the lofty skies.
I sing the wisdom that ordained
the sun to rule the day;
The moon shines full at His command,
and all the stars obey.
I sing the goodness of the Lord,
who filled the earth with food,
Who formed the creatures through the Word,
and then pronounced them good.
Lord, how Thy wonders are displayed,
where’er I turn my eye,
If I survey the ground I tread,
or gaze upon the sky.
There’s not a plant or flow’r below,
but makes Thy glories known,
And clouds arise, and tempests blow,
by order from Thy throne;
While all that borrows life from Thee
is ever in Thy care;
And everywhere that we can be,
Thou, God, art present there.
I like that one, too. Sung to the tune "Ellacombe" it makes a nice, stately entrance or exit hymn.
DeleteIt is difficult to see how "official" Catholic teaching on human origins and Original Sin (e.g., from the Catechism, from Humani Genesis, the Council of Trent) can be reconciled with modern science. The "best" idea from conservative Catholics seems to be that proto-humans evolved to the point where all that was needed was for God to ensoul two of them (who became Adam and Eve), and the descendants of Adam and Eve mated with the already existing proto-humans, producing true human children (complete with souls). So soulless and ensouled "humans" lived side-by-side for a time, until the soulless humans eventually died out. The acknowledged problem with the theory is that a proto-human without a soul is incapable of abstract thought, language, moral reasoning, and everything that separates true humans from animals. Consequently, the mating of the "true" humans (with souls) and the existing proto-humans (without souls) was tantamount to bestiality. I am not making this up.
ReplyDelete"The acknowledged problem ..." You mean there's just one problem in that scenario? Hokey smokes!
DeleteThey may "acknowledge" a problem when the ensouled mate with the souled, but I think their problem is earlier, when they decide that the soulless cannot do all the things that they think separate the ensouled from the beasts. On the one hand, we have sociopaths who are largely indistinguishable from those old soulless beings, and on the other hand we have dolphins, orangutans, tool-making birds and a growing bestiary of "soulless" creatures who are smarter than we thought they were. Get enough outliers and continuities, and their theory goes blah.
DeleteI think some folks, way back in time, looked at the Earth and found (like God) that it is good. Today, we would call them environmentalists. They also looked around them and found other people being general pains in the neck. Today we call them Sartreans. (I jest, just a little, on that point.) Those early thinkers, back in the mist, had to find an explanation for what they could verifiably see around them. And they came up with Adam and Eve. Science still hasn't come up with a more compelling description of what is plainly there.
"Science still hasn't come up with a more compelling description of what is plainly there." I agree with that, Tom.
DeleteMy takeaways from the Genesis story. Creation is good. The unity of the human race. The birth of reflexive consciousness. And finally "Houston, we have a problem."
ReplyDeleteFrom the Commonweal story:
ReplyDelete"It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the popular press continues to assume a general distrust of science on the part of the church. Rome cannot live down the Galileo case. For example, when Pope Francis, shortly after being elected, asserted that there is no conflict between the notions of creation and evolution, it was treated as front-page news worldwide, even though both John Paul II and Benedict XVI had said the same thing on many occasions."
Some of this is on the worldwide press. Too often it fails to make elementary distinctions, such as between Catholics and Evangelicals. It tends to view Christianity as an undifferentiated whole.
Much of the worldwide press has Catholic colleges and universities, in the same cities as the media companies' headquarters, printing presses, broadcast towers and so on. It should be a relatively simple matter for a reporter to pick up a phone and ask a professor of physics or genetics, or a theologian or philosophy professor, what the Catholic church's view is on any given question of science and religion.
Seems like that is a common error; to lump all versions of a faith into an undifferentiated whole. We've all heard various versions of "Real Muslims can't co-exist with other religions". And I have to admit that I was very surprised that the persecutors of the Rohingya are mostly Buddhist. Because, aren't all Buddhists, like, peaceful and stuff? It's the type of error usually made by people who aren't members of the religion in question; those who are on the outside looking in. Don't know what that says about the worldwide press.
Delete