For many
people today, saying that science and religion are in conflict is knocking on
an open door. However true this may be, simply stating a problem doesn't solve it. It doesn't suffice to mark this conclusion – science and
religion are in conflict – as a mere end
point in some logical chain of reasoning and then just leave it at that.
What is far more intriguing and fascinating is the question: where do we go from here? How can we move
beyond the conflict?
Not a fruitful starting point
Simply
stating that science and religion are in conflict is not a very fruitful
starting point for a dialogue on the relationship between science and religion.
Far more interesting is the concrete observation that some specific religious beliefs can be in conflict
with some specific scientific beliefs and the ensuing question what to do
if a concrete, specific conflict arises.
Science and religion as two different language games
Science and religion each have their
own specific discourse and operate within their own domain. Only science is
entitled to cognitive claims about physical reality. As far as science is
concerned, religion is purely epiphenomenal.
Science gives us knowledge about physical reality, science and the growth of
knowledge consist of finding good explanations (David Deutsch).[1]
Religion -
at least as seen from this individual, cognitive perspective (because religion
is far more than that) - pertains to personal perception and an emotional
attitude towards reality, it doesn’t add any knowledge about reality. Referring
to a famous concept of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, we could say that
science and religion are two different language
games which only show some resemblances at the surface. Science and
religion are not on the same level, because they are fundamentally different.
Conflicts between science and religion are prone to occur only when one tries
to put science and religion at the same level as alternative explanations
of reality. Whenever a religion claims to be a separate, alternative source of
knowledge about the world in its own right, it runs the risk of coming into
conflict with science.
A meaningless trench war
However, I do fill very ill at ease
with those who merely content themselves with defiantly pronouncing the
bankruptcy of religion as a legitimate explanation of reality, only to
throw the baby out with the bath water. I dislike the fervour with which some
seem to like to indulge themselves in a meaningless trench war between science
and religion, as if ‘science’ and ‘religion’ would be two monolithic blocks,
facing each other in an apocalyptic battle – which they are not.
As a philosopher and a theologian, I am far more interested in examining how religions evolve and transform
under the external influence of major scientific developments. Throughout
history, we have witnessed that religions react and adapt to their environment,
even if only partially and with a certain time lag. This becomes even clearer
when we focus on religion as it is
experienced as a lived religion by its members in contrast with religion as
an official doctrine. Whenever there is a major shift in society which deeply
influences its overall worldview – the emergence of the modern natural
sciences, the eventual break-through of the Enlightenment, just to name a few -
members of religious groups do not remain “untouched” by these changes and will
somehow adapt in the way they experience and live their religion.
Undoubtedly,
the profound discoveries in twentieth- and twenty-first-century science and the
ensuing changes in the overall scientific worldview will have a significant
influence on the way traditional religions will cope with their own traditions
of religious explanations of reality dating back to a pre-scientific era.
However, as numerous times in the past, rather than simply succumbing to the
dominant scientific worldview of the twenty-first century, it may be expected
that religions will – each in their own way – try to “survive” so to speak and
come to grips with diminishing the cognitive dissonance between their inherited
explanatory tradition and the newly emerging secular worldview.
Scientific knowledge and what it means to us as a human being
Knowledge about the universe is one
thing, trying to come to grips with how to respond to this new knowledge
as a human being, trying to figure out what this new knowledge means
for us as human beings, is quite another. For us, as human beings, objective
knowledge about the universe is not something insular, something disconnected
from the rest of what makes up our Lebenswelt. It is an integral part of
our human world where you also have art, poetry, music, philosophy, and, yes,
theology: activities which all say and contribute something about what it
means to be human.
The Snowflake Generation
Today’s society witnesses a growing, worrisome tendency
of polarisation, of groups of people turning in on themselves in the absolute
conviction that they are right. The unwillingness to accept that there are
groups of people with whom you disagree at a fundamental level because, for
instance, you do not share their faith, is growing by the day. Instead of
welcoming and celebrating this kaleidoscopic difference, as a basis for living
together, we see an ever-increasing sensitivity for being “offended” by other
views of the world, forms of life, ways of living. Even when they are only
apparent in absolutely trivial, purely cultural details as styles of clothing
or ways of greeting. A sensitivity which is sometimes coined as “the Snowflake
Generation”.
Out of the trenches
If you want to find out about the
fabric of reality, if your aim is to arrive at objective knowledge and good
explanations about the universe, then you will have to rely on science and
scientific methods. But how you respond to this scientific knowledge as
a human being is something else. Just like this response can be a piece of art,
or a poem, or a philosophical or theological reflection, it can also constitute
a feeling of religious belonging. There is no reason whatsoever for science and
religion to dig in their heels in the trenches. Religions can keep on
cherishing their age-old traditions, their elaborate rituals, their
meticulously transmitted sacred texts, drawing from their deeply symbolic and
historic value, as a response to our need to feel at home in our world, as a precious
cultural heritage and a source of personal spirituality and identity. But when
it comes to factual truth claims about the world, it is to science they should
turn.
[1] Deutsch,
D., The
Beginning of Infinity. Explanations that Transform The World, London,
Penguin Books Ltd., Kindle Edition, 2011, p. 120.
