How to honor religion and science -- USA TODAY, February 16, 2009
Thursday was Abraham Lincoln's birthday, the bicentennial of his birth — an anniversary that is particularly poignant this year because of the link between his freeing of the slaves and the inauguration of our first African-American president. But there was another man born the very same day whose contributions continue to cause division and debate, especially in religious circles: Charles Darwin, the English naturalist who established the theory of evolution.
We have made a great deal of progress in racial equality over the past 200 years, but we seem to have reached a stalemate — in some quarters — when it comes to Darwin's theory of evolution, and reconciling faith and science.
I've been a fan of Darwin since I was a double-major in religion and biology in college in the early '80s, and I have long sought — as many have — to find a way to make peace between the two. This is no mere academic exercise for me, but an effort that I and my religious colleagues need to make if the USA is to remain a nation of strong faith and innovative scientific research. The challenge of reconciling the two is greater than ever, with the percentage of U.S. adults who accept evolution actually declining, to about 40% from 45%, over the past 20 years.
Why? For the most part, Americans fail to see that science and religion answer very different kinds of questions. Some insist on combining the two into a faith-science hybrid, and the result is an establishment like the Creation Museum in Kentucky, at which displays show dinosaurs living in the Garden of Eden. Unlike other museums, this one does not consider its dinosaur specimens to be 450 million years old. Instead, they are said to be 6,000 years old, based on a literal reading of the Book of Genesis. This kind of mash-up raises more questions than it answers, and doesn't honor either religion or science.
Meaning vs. mechanics
In my experience, it is better to keep them separate and use them to answer two very different sets of questions about creation: "how" questions and "why" questions. Science answers the questions of how life has evolved on earth, while religion answers the questions of why there is life. When I open my Bible to Genesis, I don't look for scientific information about the structures of life. I read it as a faith-based explanation of why life exists and why we are to care for it.
Religion is very good at probing questions of meaning, while science excels at exploring the mechanics of the world we live in. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and a participant in the National Prayer Service after Barack Obama's inauguration, began her career as an oceanographer and studied the evolution of squid. She discovered that the Bible's creation stories have more to do with the meaning behind existence than with the particularities of how creation happened. She concludes that science and religion both give us knowledge, but that they are, as she puts it, "different kinds of knowing."
Science is truly godless in the sense that it does not assume that a divine being is at work in every animal, vegetable and mineral. Instead, it finds its answers through proofs based on observation and replication by multiple sources.
Darwin's theory of evolution forms the foundation of modern biology, and it has been proven true — most recently, in a 20-year experiment in which a researcher took a single bacterium and watched it reproduce and evolve for over 44,000 generations. Observation and replication give scientists answers to questions about the mechanics of life, but these approaches don't even attempt to explore the meaning of life.
Does this mean that science and religion are on separate tracks that will forever move in conflicting directions? Not necessarily. Francis Collins is the scientist and medical doctor who oversaw the Human Genome Project and authored the book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. He sees no contradiction in accepting that humans are the product of evolution and believing that God decided evolution would be the method by which humans would be created. As a scientist and a Christian, he has coined the term "BioLogos," from the Greek bio for "life" and logos for "word." This term is grounded in his belief that God spoke life into being.
This fits my understanding that words have real power, and that the word of God is a creative force in the world. From the beginning of the Bible to its end, there is testimony to the power of what God accomplishes through a word: Genesis reports that "God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light," while the Gospel of John says God's "word became flesh and lived among us" as Jesus. Although religious people are going to disagree about many theological points, there is wide agreement that God's word has creative power. This is BioLogos — God speaking life into being.
Seeking peace
In the interest of reconciling science and faith, a helpful distinction would be to say that science deals with things and religion deals with words. When scientists perform their experiments, they are making measurements of the physical properties of things, and no words are allowed to change the results of their research. When religious people use words, on the other hand, they are attempting to create new realities by expressing their understandings, experiences and deepest convictions. There is nothing empty or cheap about religious words used well. In fact, they can influence numerous lives and change the course of history.
And the two men born on Feb. 12, 1809? Darwin looked at the things of this world and came up with the theory of evolution, which has helped countless scientists to understand the mechanics of how various species have come to exist. Abraham Lincoln drew on his deepest convictions to write the Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address, expressing his belief that our nation was "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." These words had real power — first to free the slaves, and then to start us on a path to equality that has resulted in the presidency of Obama.
There can be peace between science and faith if their distinctive contributions are respected. Scientists will continue to study how things work, while religious leaders will speak of the meaning of life and use their words to create new understandings. This distinction might even be helpful to our new president, as he uses his considerable rhetorical skills to advance one of the goals of his inaugural speech: "to restore science to its rightful place." It's a worthy goal, one that can be embraced by both the scientific and religious communities.
We have made a great deal of progress in racial equality over the past 200 years, but we seem to have reached a stalemate — in some quarters — when it comes to Darwin's theory of evolution, and reconciling faith and science.
I've been a fan of Darwin since I was a double-major in religion and biology in college in the early '80s, and I have long sought — as many have — to find a way to make peace between the two. This is no mere academic exercise for me, but an effort that I and my religious colleagues need to make if the USA is to remain a nation of strong faith and innovative scientific research. The challenge of reconciling the two is greater than ever, with the percentage of U.S. adults who accept evolution actually declining, to about 40% from 45%, over the past 20 years.
Why? For the most part, Americans fail to see that science and religion answer very different kinds of questions. Some insist on combining the two into a faith-science hybrid, and the result is an establishment like the Creation Museum in Kentucky, at which displays show dinosaurs living in the Garden of Eden. Unlike other museums, this one does not consider its dinosaur specimens to be 450 million years old. Instead, they are said to be 6,000 years old, based on a literal reading of the Book of Genesis. This kind of mash-up raises more questions than it answers, and doesn't honor either religion or science.
Meaning vs. mechanics
In my experience, it is better to keep them separate and use them to answer two very different sets of questions about creation: "how" questions and "why" questions. Science answers the questions of how life has evolved on earth, while religion answers the questions of why there is life. When I open my Bible to Genesis, I don't look for scientific information about the structures of life. I read it as a faith-based explanation of why life exists and why we are to care for it.
Religion is very good at probing questions of meaning, while science excels at exploring the mechanics of the world we live in. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and a participant in the National Prayer Service after Barack Obama's inauguration, began her career as an oceanographer and studied the evolution of squid. She discovered that the Bible's creation stories have more to do with the meaning behind existence than with the particularities of how creation happened. She concludes that science and religion both give us knowledge, but that they are, as she puts it, "different kinds of knowing."
Science is truly godless in the sense that it does not assume that a divine being is at work in every animal, vegetable and mineral. Instead, it finds its answers through proofs based on observation and replication by multiple sources.
Darwin's theory of evolution forms the foundation of modern biology, and it has been proven true — most recently, in a 20-year experiment in which a researcher took a single bacterium and watched it reproduce and evolve for over 44,000 generations. Observation and replication give scientists answers to questions about the mechanics of life, but these approaches don't even attempt to explore the meaning of life.
Does this mean that science and religion are on separate tracks that will forever move in conflicting directions? Not necessarily. Francis Collins is the scientist and medical doctor who oversaw the Human Genome Project and authored the book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. He sees no contradiction in accepting that humans are the product of evolution and believing that God decided evolution would be the method by which humans would be created. As a scientist and a Christian, he has coined the term "BioLogos," from the Greek bio for "life" and logos for "word." This term is grounded in his belief that God spoke life into being.
This fits my understanding that words have real power, and that the word of God is a creative force in the world. From the beginning of the Bible to its end, there is testimony to the power of what God accomplishes through a word: Genesis reports that "God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light," while the Gospel of John says God's "word became flesh and lived among us" as Jesus. Although religious people are going to disagree about many theological points, there is wide agreement that God's word has creative power. This is BioLogos — God speaking life into being.
Seeking peace
In the interest of reconciling science and faith, a helpful distinction would be to say that science deals with things and religion deals with words. When scientists perform their experiments, they are making measurements of the physical properties of things, and no words are allowed to change the results of their research. When religious people use words, on the other hand, they are attempting to create new realities by expressing their understandings, experiences and deepest convictions. There is nothing empty or cheap about religious words used well. In fact, they can influence numerous lives and change the course of history.
And the two men born on Feb. 12, 1809? Darwin looked at the things of this world and came up with the theory of evolution, which has helped countless scientists to understand the mechanics of how various species have come to exist. Abraham Lincoln drew on his deepest convictions to write the Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address, expressing his belief that our nation was "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." These words had real power — first to free the slaves, and then to start us on a path to equality that has resulted in the presidency of Obama.
There can be peace between science and faith if their distinctive contributions are respected. Scientists will continue to study how things work, while religious leaders will speak of the meaning of life and use their words to create new understandings. This distinction might even be helpful to our new president, as he uses his considerable rhetorical skills to advance one of the goals of his inaugural speech: "to restore science to its rightful place." It's a worthy goal, one that can be embraced by both the scientific and religious communities.
posted by Henry Brinton | 11:28 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home