On the Other Hand                                   

Challenges in Relating Science

and Religion

 

by Jim Megivern

 

“Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”

 

This remark of Albert Einstein can be a conversation-starter—or stopper—in mixed company. If taken seriously, it is a real criticism of both the anti-religious scientist and the anti-science religionist. Both of these positions have been and still are heavily represented in the U.S. today. The reasons for intense mutual hostility between these two extremes are debatable, but one important contributing factor is undeniable: nineteenth-century propaganda which long circulated as history.

The crucial entrenchment of the “conflict” model in U.S. culture was due in large part to the unparalleled success of a couple of very unscientific but influential books on the history of science and religion. The authors held prestigious academic positions and had well-deserved reputations as good scientists with solid publications in their areas of expertise. So, when they ventured into the history of the relationship of science and religion, these writings were also accepted, uncritically, and placed on pedestals so that they provided a full-blown mythology about how incompatible the two subjects were, an unfortunate heritage that is still very much with us.

John William Draper published The History of the Conflict between Science and Religion in 1874, and it had unbelievable success, selling more than 400,000 copies. It went through fifty printings and was translated into ten languages. Draper was a brilliant chemist who made significant advances in the chemistry of photography and was the first president of the American Chemical Society. But in trying to write the history of science and religion, he had limited sources, used them poorly, and let his bias against religion so warp his account that the book is recognized today as loaded with unfortunate, embarrassing distortions. 

His impact might not have been so great if it had not been reinforced by the appearance of another similarly slanted account. Andrew Dickson White, the first president of Cornell University, published The Warfare of Science with Theology in 1876. It too had great success and White fully shared Draper’s anti-religious bias. The two of them contributed to the cementing of the “conflict” model in U.S. academic circles, popularizing the assumption that total opposition was the natural state of affairs between science and religion, that it always had been and always would be. The Draper-White double whammy still resonates in many quarters today. It fosters stereotypes, romanticizes early scientists as heroes engaged in fierce battle trying to uncover the truth which religious villains continuously try to stifle. Of course, dogmatic religious zealots create an opposite ‘mirror image,’ fighting to save the world from the assault of godless scientists out to destroy the Bible and all civilization dependent on it.

This kind of monistic thinking did not start with Draper-White; it already had its share of vocal representatives in England. A classical shoot-out was held at Oxford in 1860 between scientist Thomas H. Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce over Darwin’s Origin of Species. This was the kick-off in the fruitless dispute simplistically setting evolution against the Bible and vice versa. Even an otherwise well-informed twentieth-century top scientist like Carl Sagan still saw fit to cite some of the distortions of  Draper and White in his acclaimed Cosmos series, as if the false dichotomy had not been discredited.

But just as in other areas of historiography, significant work has been done in the last quarter-century. The only way to undo bad history is to replace it with good history based on better research. Philosophers and social scientists have joined recent historians in helping to broaden and deepen the search and remove deficiencies of the past. One of the most interesting partners in the contemporary discussion is Mikael Stenmark, professor of philosophy of religion at Uppsala University in Sweden. In his 2004 book, How to Relate Science and Religion, he reviewed the major approaches of the foremost authors and ended up isolating three models which he termed “the independence view, the contact view, and the monist view.” 

Making no dogmatic claims for any of them, he noted that each can exhibit as many as five different levels, depending on whether the focus is on the methods used, the goals sought, the theories applied, or the practices being compared. Stenmark thus makes a sensible case that only a multidimensional model can move the conversation forward. What we have been calling the ‘conflict’ model involves two monist views, i.e., its representatives either see science alone -- or see religion alone—as the only realm of ‘truth.’ Proponents of either kind of monism are content to wear their preferred ‘blinders’ and live in their cul-de-sac.

The recent surge of works of strict monists like Richard Dawkins (God, the Delusion) and Sam Harris (The End of Faith) is at least in part a reaction against the political power that anti-science religious monists have managed to wield in our day. But, as David van Biema noted in his TIME article, “God vs. Science” last November: “Most Americans occupy the middle ground… We want to cheer on science’s strides and still humble ourselves on the Sabbath… We seek those who possess religious conviction but also scientific achievements to credibly argue the widespread hope that science and God are in harmony—that, indeed, science is of God.”

Van Biema makes this remark right before introducing excerpts from the ninety-minute September 30, 2006, public debate between Dawkins and Francis Collins (The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief). No matter where one comes out personally on this question, it is interesting to note how much Dawkins conceded to Collins and Collins conceded to Dawkins when they talked rationally to one another face to face. The real targets of Dawkins’ anger are fundamentalist believers whom he derides as “clowns” in their refusal to accept the most basic data of modern science. Collins gently reminded him, however, that historically speaking they are exceptions who do not represent traditional religious thinking.  Sixteen centuries ago, e.g., St. Augustine explicitly instructed the Christians of his day not to take the Genesis creation accounts literally because this “puts our faith at risk of looking ridiculous.”

Leaving “monist” models to take up the “independence” model, there is a welcome change of atmosphere as  the bitterness of conflict is put aside. Science and religion are understood as inhabiting entirely separate domains. They coexist peacefully by recognizing strict boundaries between them. Stephen Jay Gould may have sketched this model best in his 1997 paper “Nonoverlapping Magisteria” (NOMA). As he  says, “the lack of conflict arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise—science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives. The attainment of wisdom in a full life requires extensive attention to both domains.”

Despite Gould’s aura as a peace-maker (“I believe with all my heart in a respectful, even loving concordat between our magisteria…on moral and intellectual grounds, not a mere diplomatic stance”), not many others have found it very persuasive. The  “NOMA principle” seems itself to be an act of faith unwarranted by common experience, since there seem to be multiple areas of overlap.

So, leaving aside both monist and independence models, the “contact” model stands at the center. Most participants in the thriving new dialogue of the last two decades practice some variant of it. As Stenmark illustrated, the variety of ways in which science and religion come into ‘contact’ with one another makes it unlikely that a single, simple model could ever capture this complexity. To get a sense of this, one need only scan, e.g., the reader edited by Ted Peters and Gaymon Bennett, Bridging Science and Religion (2003), in which more than fifteen scientists and theologians explore and explain their experience leading from one side of the bridge to the other.

The very title of the popular book by Ian G. Barbour, When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? (2000), sums up what has been happening: due to the continuing advancements in astronomy, evolutionary biology, quantum physics, genetics, and other fields, it is no surprise that reasonable people find the universe more mysterious than either science or religion can ever fully disclose. It makes no sense to remain bogged down in hostilities of the past when all stand to benefit from engaging in the widest-ranging intellectual contact possible. Perhaps we can take a closer look next time at some of the chief exemplars making their contributions at this global roundtable.

 

Jim Megivern is Professor Emeritus in Philosophy and Religion at UNC Wilmington. He is a contributing founder of CCV and a regular columnist.