the foot of Ultrasaurus, his discovery
Too often I hear the argument that science promotes atheism. Such arguments do NOT hold up well under data (see: "Religion Among Academic Scientists"). Below are some observations on the interactions of science and religion from my personal experience.
Scientists do NOT live in a cultural vacuum, a hypothetical place where there is an absence of social influence. Of the many scientists I have known NOT one has tried to create such a vacuum. Scientists are people who love life and nature. They would never want to be isolated from it. Human life inevitably touches upon religion.
Both LDS and non-LDS peoples have influenced my life in science. I have been in academics and science all my adult life. No one has ever told me, inside or outside the Church, that Mormons fail to make good practicing scientists. If anything, I have been told the reverse.
Scientific ideas and training have a strong tendency toward being mechanistic, naturalistic, impartial, parsimonious, deterministic, reductionistic, evolutionary, mathematical, data oriented, and subject to test and revision. These perspectives apply even to the study of the human brain, which is my field.
Should these scientific dimensions and perspectives apply to religious practice? They can apply, but not strictly. Religion in contrast to science operates on a different set of rules and objectives. Religious ideas and training are often based in authority (e.g., scripture and prophets) and inspiration. Subjective processes often play an important role.
Science is NOT anti-religion. It does, however, set religion aside in its approach to knowledge. Even so, I have known many scientists who are strongly religious (LDS and non-LDS), and who have operated at prominent institutions (such as Harvard, the University of California system, BYU, among others where I have been affiliated).
It has been my privilege to hear scientists pray. It was my privilege to enter a Catholic cathedral with a scientist friend and watch him kneel and cross himself. I have attended various religious services with both LDS and non-LDS scientists.
Religion and science blend into the individual, even if they generally operate in separate settings.
I am skeptical by nature, a skill that serves me well in science but not always so well in religion. All my firm religious beliefs have come the hard way – experimenting upon the word. Naturally I like Alma chapter 32 in which the word experiment is used several times, such as:
Alma 32:27
27 … if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, … ye can give place for a portion of my words.
Please note that Alma seems to be saying that religious understanding occurs by turning on the brain (becoming awake) and doing experiments until one can accept a PORTION of God's words. No one is asking, least of all Alma, for people to be enlightened completely and all at once. Knowledge, whether religious or scientific, takes place gradually.
Both science and religion take extreme patience. In a sense, they both involve faith, but they make use of different qualities of faith. In my religion we are given prayer, inspiration, scriptures, and the words of prophets and apostles as tools to build faith based upon experience. Until a strong conviction arrives, any given religious doctrine may have to be suspended in a "hopeful" disbelief. If so, much more study is required – maybe years and years of work. Fortunately for me, no one has pushed me farther or faster than I could go.
I appreciate that the Book of Mormon has the following passage:
Mosiah 4:27
27 … it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. …
Religion is a description of the world as we hope to find it. It is driven by faith, prayer, meditation, scripture, and inspiration. It too can involve experimental tests, but religious conclusions are individually driven, not normally subject to public scrutiny.
Science is a description of the world as we find it in existence. It is driven by observation and data. Scientists use the data to test hypotheses, and then they revise and refine their thinking based upon those tests. It is a group-driven process. Scientific findings are subject to revision, but after extensive testing any stable findings are no longer considered tentative.
Are science and religion compatible? They should be; they must be, but there are limitations. The notion of God is outside of the domain of science. Scientific findings and conclusions are outside the domain of religion.
In a nice story by Alicia Moulton entitled "Science professors don't view evolution as an 'either-or' proposition," there is a summary of how LDS life scientists at BYU view Darwin. As the article reveals, Darwinism is NOT inherently anti-religion.
Mormon scientists are like any other. We observe gravity; cell division; chemical reactions; isotopic decay; and many other phenomena of nature. Our religion does NOT affect the basic observations of natural process.
A primary scientific observation is that fossils of organisms systematically have changed over geological time. These changes we have called evolution.
Evolution is observed and tested from multiple perspectives. For example, we know what kind of sea-life fossils should be found in a wide range of geological layers all across the earth. Classes, orders, and families of organisms are tied together by shared characteristics, such as common skeletal designs, similar organ functions, and related life-styles. There is a relationship between the structure of fossils in the geologic record and the structure of their DNA. The various sources of supporting data are overwhelming.
Scientists argue over theories of evolution, but they do NOT argue over the fact of evolution. Theories include: natural selection, sexual selection, kin selection, Red Queen theory, punctuated equilibrium, gradualism, genetic drift, geographic isolationism, and so on. These are all proposed ideas about how evolution could have been driven.
Naturally, Church members are free to disbelieve in evolution, but LDS scientists have been involved in evolutionary science for decades, and they have even made important contributions, such as those made by Dinosaur Jim Jensen.
Truth has a momentum of its own. I am very confident that the concept of evolution always will have a central place in the life sciences.
The good news is that evolutionary findings are NOT atheistic. They are agonistic. Science simply is not designed to address the concept of God. In fact, the rare scientists who sometimes attempt to promote atheism using scientific concepts are CLEARLY outside of their domain of authority and understanding. Such attempts are a misuse of science.
Theology pursues depths on origin of life that science cannot reach, such as God, ultimate meaning, and spirit. The language used by theologians cannot easily be translated into scientific terms. By contrast, the language of science reaches beyond that of religion. For example, evolutionists are comfortable with comparative anatomy, the proto-wrists of Tiktaalik, and the role of opsin genes in the development of eyes, fossil hunting, the analysis of dinosaur bones, and the role of DNA.
Darwinian theory is that grand synthesis that ties together the diverse facts of biology. To disregard evolution would damage biology just as disregarding gravity would damage physics.
Mormon life-scientists can be evolutionists, and further, I would argue that they must be. Scientists do NOT have the option of ignoring overwhelming data.
We have a religion that is dedicated to the truth no matter where it is found. Evolution is NOT a threat to theism. It is simply agnostic, like all of science.
Across the Christian world there are religionists who vehemently attack evolution. They are welcome to do so. However, they are fighting a battle that has long been lost. The war is over, even if a few skirmishes still persist.
Despite any scientific findings, faith simply goes on. It should.
Copyright 2008 S.Faux (Email: foxgoku54 [at] gmail [d0t] c0m; URL: http://mormoninsights.blogspot.com). Readers may distribute this post for noncommercial purposes provided such distributing is of the entire post, including author's copyright and contact information. All other rights reserved.
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11 comments:
You've touched upon a topic that is a favorite of mine. In addition to the other subjects you mentioned, science cannot inform us about the atonement, which in my view is the core concept of revealed religion. I have learned – or, more accurately, am learning – that one of the differences in scientific and religious modes of learning is that revelation takes place in both our minds AND in our hearts (see D&C 8:2). Science, I believe, will study the heart but not be informed by it.
Common ground between science and religion includes the search for truth, defined in D&C 93:24 as “knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.” The different approaches to this search obviously test different hypotheses and yield different results. Both are invaluable within their respective spheres and it is, as you suggest, critical to understand the boundaries and limitations of each. There is clearly a difference between studying the Rock of Ages and the ages of rocks. Both are enriching and rewarding.
Dee:
Thanks for your insightful comment, and I especially appreciated your insertion of the concept of atonement.
Great piece. Thanks!
What an insightful post. I agree completely. As an evolutionary biologist I've never found science and religion incompatible. I think the people who try and set one against the other are doing a disservice to both science and religion. I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to pass this post out to my students.
Thanks for saying these things.
SteveP: Thanks for the nice words, and I will be very honored to have these words distributed, especially to LDS students.
I have a rather different take on science as an institution, as do many in the scientific community itself. It is from within that body that I hear the strongest criticism of the institution. While individuals within the scientific community contribute greatly, as a functioning body it impedes progress rather than facilitating it. (Investigate the case of Halton Arp, author of "Seeing Red" for example.) Practices such as government-funded research, tenure and the peer-review system greatly tend to stifle the open introduction and exploration of new ideas. (As another example, take the case of Dr. Robert Becker, the author of "The Body Electric" and "Cross Currents.") In fact, I would argue that it is science, as an institution, that now stands in the way of progress. From a LDS point of view, the news is even more grim. (Read http://mormonprophecy.blogspot.com/2008/12/religion-science-and-catastrophism.html and http://mormonprophecy.blogspot.com/2008/10/great-and-abominable-church.html)
Anthony:
Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, institutions like "science" can have their quirks, but I know of no cultural institution that has been more successful in its growth and impact than that of science. For example, in my field, brain science, we have learned more about the brain in the last 15 years than the sum total of what we had ever known previously. The explosive nature of science is NOT catastrophism but mushroomism. The growth of knowledge is faster than scientists can keep up with it.
I think it is REALLY difficult to support your claim that, "science, as an institution, ... stands in the way of progress."
But, the nice thing about science is that it is a self-correcting process. Science and scientists need to be open to criticism.
Thanks again.
Just wanted to let you know - I'm not a real scientist - I'm just a regular person with regular curiosities - my level is barely par to listen/understand Science Friday on NPR... ;)
Anyways, I'm also deeply religious, and I love the connection that you make between science and religion. Even though I have an infantile understanding of both science and religion, I feel like at some point each discipline will help me to better understand the other...(In other words, I'm looking forward to Physics classes in the Spirit world. There's got to be a way to explain moving in the twinkling of an eye!)
This is a longer comment than I meant to make...Great Post.
chococatania:
I appreciate your recent comments on this blog, and you are welcome to make as many as you like, short or long.
Yes, I cannot wait (well, I take that somewhat back) to attend Heavenly University and study tensor calculus, quantum mechanics, and "In-Depth Natural and Social History of the Physical World."
A true Hell for me would be to know there was such a university while also knowing that my application for admission was permanently rejected. Whew! I would truly be miserable.
I appreciate your carefully thought out comments. You seem to advocate a position similar to Steven J. Gould's nonoverlapping magisteria. I respect this point of view. If people agree that religion and science occupy separate, nonoverlapping domains, then they cannot logically assert that something like evolution and the gospel are completely compatible, for how can you compare two domains that are distinct and separate. Thomas Kuhn argued that incommensurate theories are incomparable; I tend to agree.
Dave C:
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I have enjoyed your website, even though we disagree on some scientific issues. More importantly, we agree on the gospel.
Side note: I trained under Hal Miller over 27 years ago. That should give you some clue as to my scientific orientation.
Best wishes to you.
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