Science and Religion: Compatible or Irreconcilable? 1

Hardly any one will doubt the value of science. The impact of science in the form of technology is as dazzling as the sun. The impact of religion on the lives of huge sections of the population, especially in technologically less advanced societies, and in one of the most technologically advanced societies, America, is no less obvious. Can science ever replace religion as the dominant cultural force in our civilizations? Has science already overtaken religion as the foremost intellectual force in our world? If not, can it ever do so? What is the proper relation between science and religion? These are questions which every thinking man will ask himself at one point or another of his life. To find out, I read two articles: "Science and Religion: No Irenics Here" (2006) by Fred Wilson and "Is Religion Compatible with Science and Ethics? A Critique of Stephen Jay Gould's Two Magisteria"(2005) by Paul Kurtz.

According to Wilson, science and religion are not only different but incompatible. How? Many religions hold that values are "objectively" there as part of the ontological structure of the world eg. Plato and Aristotle and that to understand how things in this world works, it is necessary to transcend the natural world and look at it from a more fundamental, permanent, unchanging, eternal and ultimate perspective. Science on the other hand is concerned only with how things in fact work in the natural and social world and in that sense, wholly naturalistic. Moreover, some scientists and philosophers of science claim that to understand how things work, it is unnecessary for us to find some kind of "objective" or God-given or God sanctioned value structure within which to place such understanding and since our values are rooted in our psychology and our culture, value systems can be justified only by how well they serve our well being. To the social scientist, moral values should be evaluated by human standards, not by the standards of any so-called "natural law" or by any divine standards and hence, we should take responsibility for the kind of moral standards we in fact adopt and not ascribe them to any God or other divine being(s).

Stephen Jay Gould has argued in Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (1999)  that science and religion are non-overlapping magisteria: one deals with fact and the other with values, of goodness and God, that science deals with "how" questions and religion deals with "why" questions. But to Wilson, morality is one thing but ultimate meaning and ultimate reality and God is another. To the followers of the Abrahamic monotheistic religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam, values, the meaning of life, what is permitted and what is not, depend ultimately on God's will and not on our own way of thinking. To philosophers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, people have what they think of as a "soul" which has the ability to perceive what they think of as "eternal forms" through the use of their "reason" and that how things do behave also point to how they ought to behave. If so, the natural laws are not only descriptive but also normative and prescriptive. Whilst Plato seeks to explain mostly human behavior, Aristotle tries to extend his master's explanatory model to all changing things. He called the bearer of the active power "substances" and his doctrine found its way into Christian metaphysics which uses it to support their religious dogma and morality. To Wilson, "what the Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics does is provide a rationale for values held on other grounds".They are "value judgements disguised as objective fact."  Science however, provides another method: observation, hypothesis formation, experimental verification or falsification. It abandons the philosophically speculative tasks of "intuiting" through the use of reason what the "eternal forms" might be and what kind of force is driving things to behave in the way that they do and relies principally on careful and controlled observation and hypothesis testing through the experimental method. Locke thus argues that the world of forms is "a figment of our philosphical imagination. To Wilson, "Just as moral content of the forms was a projection of the wishes and values of those defending the metaphysics, so also the natural-unnatural distinction in physics". To the scientist, the distinction is a distinction of no consequence, a pseudo-problem. Science is able to solve problems the old metaphysics could not. Science proceeds by finding "timeless patterns" and not seek to find explanations for how things and people behave through "a timeless entity" (God), not through "transcendental forms" but by "natural patterns", which patterns are merely descriptive, not normative. To the scientist, his explanations of morality makes no appeal to any so-called "objective values" given by any supposedly divine entity.

This is how Wilson defines how morality comes about and how science may assist us in achieving our moral and other ideals: "Morality thus becomes, with the new empirical science, not something that is discovered in the world, not something that we rationally intuit; it is something that we find within ourselves, but put there by social forces, forces over which we have some control, not by God over whom we have no control. Morality thus turns out to be something we create...as social beings...we have a choice in the matter. We can, within limits...choose the values we are to live by. As for what we can't choose, then at the least, we can accept those things as our fate in the world of fact. We can ask, what vision of the good do we have? Is it a good worth having. And we can ask whether it is an attainable good, and if it is, we can ask how we can best go about attaining it? The former are questions of value. Science will not help us answer those. But the others are questions of fact, and there science can tell us the answers to those questions. In other words, while science cannot tell us what the good is, it can describe the means that are available for attaining that good...it will tell us...that most of the goods that we value can be attained only if we form with our fellows a stable society or community of persons....we must develop sharable values and co-operative behavior...how better to develop a social order that can secure the goods that make life worth living...we can secure our vision of the good only if we have a moral and social order that promotes that end.....The moral or social order, our moral and political values, is not something that is imposed upon us, it is something that we find within ourselves, and it is something that we can shape and develop. It is therefore something for which we must take responsibility". 

To me, if we accept what Wilson says, then if our society decides that it is not right to kill, we can no longer claim that it is the natural law that we should not kill or that it is God's will that it be so. Socrates has asked long ago the question whether we should be virtuous because it is decreed by the gods that we should be so or whether the gods decree that we should be virtuous because it is good to be so. We as a society should decide whether it is good not to kill except for good reasons or whether we should never kill under any circumstances and if so, why and whether we should accept such reasons.

What is evident from Wilson's article is that whilst science has freed us from the burden of "objective values", it has given us the responsibility for deciding and following the values that we have, for our own moral order and for our own vision of what constitutes "good". To Wilson, and here, I agree with him, to think that the moral values that we as a society in fact hold as somehow "objectively" found in the fabirc of the universe or as decreed by God, is merely a metaphysical sleight of hand by those in authority for better and more easily securing the consent of the ignorant and unthinking populace to the continuance of those values which our society in fact finds useful or expedient to hold for reasons totally unrelated to some such "God" or "gods". We have all learned from Lord Acton that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Those who claim to act in the name of God are seldom free from that human tendency which Lord Acton so succinctly pointed out from his study of human history.

We have found in all kinds of religious rules of conduct which a modern secular society may find repugnant e.g.to hold that women should be subservient to men, that pork or beef should be avoided under all circumstances, that society should follow a caste system the identity and social status of whose members are determined at birth, that there are devils in this world and that those in league with this supposed "devil" should be burned at the stake, that only ordained priests should have the power to forgive sins, that all Jews should be circumcised, that all women must wear a veil whenever they appear in public, that man is the master of the earth, that God created the world for exploitation by man, that it is alright to treat others as slaves, that one may immediately go to heaven if one were to engage in terrorist activities in the name of one's religion, that it is right to offer human sacrifices to the gods, and to fight all kinds of religious wars, whether you call them crusades or jihads etc. 

As Wilson says, to think that our morality is objective because there is a God who has decided for all eternity for us that what the priests and theologians say that he thinks is right is absolutley right and what they say he thinks is wrong is absolutely and certainly wrong may well be "a disguise that allows us to ignore our responsibility for our values and allows us to institute without critical examination both the silly and the nasty" . Empirical science has freed us from the burden of such values. By ascribing the origin of all our morality to a supreme supernatural being, we are encouraged to conduct our lives as slaves who must at all times look upon what is pleasing and displeasing to a supposed God. By worshiping God, we turn ourselves into slaves, as Nietzsche claimed in the last century. There are perks for being a slave of course. We can feel safe in thinking that we are right and have the support of the most powerful being in the universe imaginable: we shall have a most powerful protector, law giver, who is supposed to love us even more than we do ourselves and we are assured a place in the Pearly Gates if we do what he decrees that we do and refrain from doing what he prohinits. But by the same token, we shall be cast to burn for all eternity in a fire which never extinguishes. To me, this kind of punishment is totally disproportionate in that we live upon this earth for not more than a hundred years but we shall suffer for all eternity if we were to act against the will of God. This is against all notions of proportionality in the sentencing of criminals in a modern society. What a price we have to pay for such feelings of security! We lose that most precious quality that a human being can possibly possess: our autonomy. We cannot decide for ourselves what we think is good for ourselves. It has been decided for us, from all eternity.

Though with the greastest reluctance, I have to agree with Wilson's conclusion: "God is an illusion, a projection of our own values upon the world freeing us for the need to defend our choices. He/she/it ought therefore to be exorcised from the magisterium of ethics...and morality...if we are responsible knowers and doers.".