Religion and Science: Compatible or Irreconcilable? 2

We saw in Wilson's article that in so far as the discovery of the reality of the universe is concerned, religion and science may be incompatible and that the basis of moral values may no longer be God but ourselves. Paul Kurtz however approaches this problem from a different perspective.

According to Kurtz, speaking as a "scientific naturalist and a skeptic", confining himself to the discussion of  the religion of a monotheistic but personal Abrahamic God, which claim to provide a special kind of revealed truth, supernatural and independent of science, an authoritative source of morality and a divine judge of political order, such a religion is incompatible, not only with science, but also with ethics and democratic politics. However, insofar as "religious discourse" is considered as a kind of "existential poetry", then he thinks that "religion and science are not necessarily incompatible." According to Kurtz, if religious followers claim that their beliefs are "absolutely true, righteous and just" then religion would be "irreconcilable with science and much of ethics and politics." He too, disagrees with Stephen Jay Gould, who maintains that "there are distinct magisteria and as such are compatible...magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what is the universe made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory)" but the magisterium of religion "extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral virtue"  

To Kurtz, the first conflict between science and religion is in the area of what is considered to be "true" and the kind of method one can legitimiately use in arriving at what is believed to be the "truth". Science is predicated upon free inquiry, critical thinking and the willingness to question assumptions. Scientific truths must be justified by evidence. It must be predictable, logically consistent, and have mathematical coherence. It must theoretically be repeatable and must be judged by peer review. Hence scientific truths must be objective and is implicitly universal, trans-cultural or free from individual and cultural bias. Religious truths on the other hand often have to appeal to authority, tradition, faith, mysticism and revelations to convince those who would believe in them. In addition, the monotheistic religions, for the sake of maintaining the purity of their identities, often draw sharp lines between what is inside and outside, what is considered as part of"themselves" and what is considered as "the others", the saved and the damned, the clean and the unclean, the believer and the non-believers, the belongers and the non-belongers and hence are often exclusive, intolerant of the purported "truths" of rival religions or of rival sects within the same religion and will not hesitiate to engage in wars to propagate their own version of the "Truth".

Historically the Christian religion is not averse to suppressing free inquiry e.g. the case of Copernicus and the house arrest of Galileo and  the burning of Bruno, the attack upon Darwin and would not hesitate to use force and authority to preserve what they regard as the "truth". Even today, many Christians are opposed to stem cell research, abortions, homosexuality and some are still opposed to divorce on doctrinal grounds.

In the third place, a scientific question cannot be resolved by appeal to supernatural entities, to miracles, the paranormal and the occult but many theologians have little qualms in trying to settle theological disputes as to what they think the truth might be by appealing to their own beliefs in what God is supposed to have said. The scientist seeks natural  causes, not theological causes to explain the happening of various phenomena calling for explanations e.g the theory of evolution but many Christians, Muslims, Orthodox Catholics do not accept evolution and prefer the biblical accounts of direct separate creation of different species of living things. Many Christians believe that amongst all the creatures, human beings have been singled out by God to hold dominion over the universe and everything within it and that each person has an "ïmmortal soul" created by God at the time of insemination of a female ovum by the male sperm. But they have little or no factual evidence in support of their beliefs and many of them still try vainly to fight a losing battle against the advances in scientific knowledge of how the universe and the animals and plants came to be created by adopting theories like the "god of the gap" hypothesis, creationism and its barely disguised later form called "intelligent design" chiefly by pointing out weaknesses in the evidence for Darwinism and thereby hope to rub off some of the credibility which "science" enjoys in the contemporary world in support of their fundamentalist religious faith about which I shall write in a later blog.   

Kurtz also disagrees with Gould's view that science has no role to play in matters of morality because it is a '"non-factual" domain. He says that different religions have different stands on such  practical questions like monogamy and polygamy, divorce, abortion, stem cell research, capital punishments, food laws, women's rights etc. If so, whose magisterium should be followed in matters of what constitutes moral behavior? On the question of the purported "afterlife", different religions also have different views on who is entitled to go to heaven or deserve to burn in hell. Again, whose magisterium should be followed?

Kurtz thinks that scientists and social scientists have a lot to contribute to the study of various religions by using the methods of historical research, archeology, linguistics, anthropology, sociology and psychology to examine the claims of Revelations. Scholars have found that many of the so-called religious "truths" have little or no factual evidence in their favor and an examination of the way the Bible and the Qu'ran were written has also led to considerable skepticism about their claims to contain inerrant or infallible truths. Scientists have also found no evidence of the existence of  any incorporeal  or disembodied "souls" separate from a physical body and a physical brain which are capable of any independent and discarnate existence therefrom or after the a person dies, let alone evidence that such "souls" are immortal. Their conclusions are that these are merely matters of pure "faith". Their findings are not surprsing. Souls are not supposed to be material!  

From the Renaissance onwards, moral philosphers too have sought to explain human morality by relying on such concepts as man's material, biological, psychological and social needs, social instincts, man's natural tendency to desire to be happy and to avoid pain and suffering, the common good, his innate sense for social justice, the benefits of co-operation as against  unbridled competition, enlightened self-interest, utilitarian values, pragmatic effects, cultural traditions etc. Kurtz thinks that from Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant and Mill on down to the present, philosophers have sought to dispute the idea that morality and ethics should necessarily be based exclusively on religious beliefs. Gould thinks that science is concerned with facts not moral values (which he considers to be beyond the capacity of empirical research but Kurtz does not think so.) To Kurtz. education, social psychology, psychiatry, policy sciences such as economics, sociology and political science show that science can indeed be used to help resolve social and moral problems. Although philosophically, it is impossible to derive an "ought" from an "is", at least we can take into consideration our knowledge of facts and of the causes and likely consequences of alternative policies and means-ends evaluations e.g. studies have helped us understand much more now about the genetic, neurological, physiological, biographical, psychological and historical basis of homosexuality in that it has taught us that it is not as "unnatural" and certainly much more widespread in all kinds of societies at all ages than what certain religious leaders may wish us to believe. 

Apart from the historical conflict between religion and science, religion has also had some quite powerful effects on the politics of certain countries. Many religious leaders argue that even the state should be subsumed under the divine order e.g the sharia as revealed through the Qu'ran and Hadith is taken as the foundation of law, sometimes leading to theocracy, the wedding of the mosque and the state. Even in America, religious interests have played an extremely influential part in helping candidates like George Bush to win the presidential election.      

Despite the conflict in many areas between science and religion, Kurtz thinks that religion still has a role to play in modern society and for that reason, it is unlikely that religions will disappear any time soon despite scientific advances in many spheres of human knowledge and human civilization. To him, religious language is "not primarily descriptive, nor is it prescriptive."( not prescriptive? I wonder)  He thinks that the "descriptive and explanatory functions of language are within the domain of science; the prescriptive and normative are the function of ethics." In such domains, each has its own kind of autonomy. He thinks that the function of religion is evocative, expressive and emotive: "it presents esthetic inspiration, moral poetry, performative ceremonial rituals, which act out and dramatize the human condition and human interests, and seek to slake the thirst for meaning and purpose." To him, the religions of revelation "deal in fictionalized tales, parables, narrative metaphors, stories and myths: they frame the divine in human form (anthropomorphic). They express the existential yearnings of individuals endeavoring to cope with the world that they encounter and to find meaning in the face of death." He thinks that religious language is eschatological and  that its primary function is to express hope. He says, "If science gives us truth, morality the good and the right, and politics justice, then religion is in the realm of the expectation and promise. Its main function is to overcome despair and hopelessness in response to human tragedy, adversity and conflict--the brute, inexplicable, contingent and fragile facts of the human condition". Religion to Kurtz is not primarily about what is true, what is good, what is right and what is just but is "an attempt to transcend contrition, fear, anxiety, remorse and provide "balm for the aching heart" many if not all through the creative human imagination: "they traffic in fantasy and fiction, taking the promises of long forgotten historical figures and endowing them with eternal cosmic significance." In that regard, they are similar to other powerful works of art like Verdi's and Puccini's operas, Dante's poems, Shakespeare and Moliere's 's plays, Dostoievski's and Balzac's novels, the cathedral at Chartres, the skyscrapers of New York. "The creative religious imagination weaves tales of consolation and expectation. They are the dramatic expression of human longing, enabling humans to overcome grief and depression and escape from the tragedies of the world." In this sense, religious beliefs and religious statements cannot be taken to be objectively true, only metaphorically and esthetically meaningful. Many human beings cannot bear the thought of the ultimate extinction of the universe and of our civilization: they crave immortality. Religions arise to supply that need. But to Kurtz, many atheists and agnostics have found life meaningful and worth living for its own sake in the here and now, as fully and richly as they can in the secular and naturalistic world.. 

To me, religion is ultimately a multi-purpose institution to help us cope with certain universal problems of human life: it provides simple, easy to understand answers to many otherwise unanswerable pseudo-questions like "where do we come from?", "where shall we go after we are dead?", " Is  there a universally applicable and externally given meaning and purpose to human life in general and my life in particular? "  and by extension to other forms of life: it provides a professional class of ecclesiastics to help us go through life's most dramatic, most risky moments like birth, puberty, marriage, sickness, old age and eventually death, or crisis like wars, droughts, famines, floods, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, earth quakes, tsunamis, plagues, loss of dear ones; it provides a common physical place like a church, a synagogue, a mosque, a temple etc. where the faithful can meet at regular intervals to renew their common faith and beliefs and where religious rituals to commemorate significant events in the history of their religion may be re-enacted so as to bring their mythical or legendary past back to the present in feasts like the birth of their prophets, the passover, the last supper, the resurrection of the body or other religiously meaningful events; it helps many villages, towns, cities and even nations to build up their own traditions; it establishes a set of rituals through which we may relive the relevant existential crisis faced by people of all times and places; it also provides simple guidelines on what we should or should not do under various commonly shared morally perplexing circumstances in our social life.  It does so through a ready made and easily understood story in poetic language with larger than life characters with some of whose plights and whose lives and with some of whose qualities the ordinary folks may identify, as meaningful answers to some of the deepest concerns of man which the ordinary folks are likely to have to face and thereby help them negotiate the treacherous waters in the river of life. .

Ultimately, religious language is the language of myth . According to the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski: "Studied alive, myth....is not an explanation in satisfaction of a scientific interest, but a narrative resurrection of a primeval reality, told in satisfaction of deep religious wants, moral cravings." (Magic Science and Religion)(1954) .The religious scholar Mircea Eliade says in his book Myth and Reality (1963,) "In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time."  Rollo May says in his book The Cry for Myth (1991), that a myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence. "Whether the meaning of existence is only what we put into life by our own individual fortitude, whether there is a meaning we need to discover, the result is the same....Through its myths, a healthy society gives its members relief from neurotic guilt and excessive anxiety." To May, the myth is always a story which carries the values of society and its narration always points towards totality rather than specificity and is chiefly a right brain function. "The myth unifies the antinomies of life: conscious and unconscious, historical and present, individual and social", in a form which is passed down from generation to generation, from age to age. "Whereas empirical language refers to objective facts, myths refers to the quintessence of human experience, the meaning and significance of human life. The whole person speaks to us, not just to our brain.", he says. To May, "myth is a form of expression which reveals a process of thought and feeling--man's awareness of and response to the universe, his fellow men, and his separate being. It is a projection in concrete and dramatic form of fears and desires undiscoverable and inexpressible in any other way".

In the 20th century and even now, our myths no longer serve their function of making sense of our existence. Thus many young and not so young people in our sprawling city slums or even in some posh clubs or apartments are left without purpose or direction in life and people cannot control their anxiety and excessive guilt feelings. Psychologist Jerome Brunner writes: " ...when the prevailing myth fail to fit the varieties of man's plight, frustration expresses itself first in mythoclasm and then in the lonely search for internal identity".(Myth and Identity in ed. Henry A Murray Myth and Mythmaking (1960)) When people fail to find meaning in the traditional God, they may feel miserable. Myths are our way of finding meaning and significance in a confused and confusing world. "Myths are like the beams in a house: not exposed to outside view, they are the structure which holds the house together so people can live in it, " says May.  Indeed, if people cannot find consolation and hope, they may drift into promiscuity, drugs, alcoholism etc. on the psychologically plausible logic that a little something is still better than nothing and a short break is better than no break. Peter Berger says in Pyramids of Sacrifice, "It is through myths that men are lifted above their captivity in the ordinary, attain powerful visions of the future and realize such visions." In "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music", Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher who announced the death of God through the mouth of a madman, asks, "What does our great hunger signify, our clutching about us of countless other cultures, our consuming desire for knowledge, if not the loss of myth, of a mythic home, the mythic womb?" Our hunger for myth is for May, our hunger for community, for purpose and hence meaning in our lives.  

If we understand religion as part and parcel of man's efforts to try to deal with cetrtain universal existential problems of humanity in mythic form, as Kurtz and May seem to think, then how can there be any conflict between religion and science? Science and religion address quite different problems with only certain overlaps as far as factual issues are concerned. We should never understand mythic questions as factual questions! Science is concerned with rational ideas on factual matters, religion is concerned with man's practical existential emotional needs but is often presented by unimaginative religious leaders as if it would also satisfy his rational intellectual or epistemological needs! Hence we find the kind of the confusion and muddled thinking in a great many followers of various religion who try to treat their religions as if it were a factual matter, as if it were a scientific question! Hence the misguided and misplaced enthusiasm of many fundamentalist Christians for "intelligent design"!