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On February 4th, 2014, the Creation Museum of Christian apologist Ken Ham hosted a debate between Ham and the scientist Bill Nye regarding the validity of the Young Earth hypothesis espoused by many fundamentalist Christians, which posits the Earth as having been created by God over the course of six days about 6000 years ago, according to a literal interpretation of the account given in the Biblical Book of Genesis. Ham defended the hypothesis, while Nye defended the scientific consensus claim that the Earth was created through natural processes about 4.5 billion years ago. I side unreservedly with Bill Nye on this matter but found the proceedings ridiculous overall. Ken Ham’s position is egregiously wrong and willfully ignorant to the point of not being worthy of debate. It’s certainly concerning that a large number of Americans agree with him, but the fact that they hold that position in the first place means that they’re not likely to be swayed by rational argumentation on the matter. Thus, however clear it may be to me that Nye won the debate and thoroughly trounced Ham’s position, I think that the actual effect of the debate was to give that position a highly visible platform.
The Nye-Ham debate is emblematic of the broader relationship between science and religion. These two fields of discourse are generally perceived as being both fully disjunct and largely in conflict with one another. Certainly, science and religion do come into conflict—the Young Earth creationist claim and the scientific consensus claim about the age of the Earth cannot both be correct—but the relationship between the two fields of discourse is generally more complex than that and, while conflicts do arise, I don’t see them as being necessary or intrinsic to either science or religion.
As an aside, I have to mention that Ham’s position is not even internally consistent. The topography of the Earth as described in Genesis is that of a flat disk internal to a body of water and separated from it by a large dome. It doesn’t seem that Ham accepts this topology, which means that he does not, as he claims, accept the Bible as literally true. Were Ham to be intellectually consistent, he would have to be a flat-Earther.
An examination of the relationship between science and religion requires that one delineate the two fields of discourse as they have existed historically and as they exist presently. This is a more difficult matter than it might seem at first: while we have intuitive understandings of both that generally serve well enough for everyday purposes, historically, much of what we would presently describe as science was not thought of as such; the emergence of the term “science” to describe methodological inquiry into the natural world did not occur until the 18th century. Likewise, the construal of “religion” as we understand it today emerged over the course of modernity (Cavanaugh, 2009). Neither is a natural ontological category; both are socially and historically constructed, and this is true as well of the category of “philosophy,” which has also been historically intertwined with both science and religion.
We have been scientists, philosophers, and theologians for as long as we’ve been humans, if not longer (depending on how you define “human” with regards to the speciation of hominids), and it’s only very recently, in relative terms, that we’ve come to differentiate between them. For most of our history, these three fields of discourse could be grouped under the general heading of inquiry, and inquiry into the migratory patterns of herd animals, into the meaning and value of life, into the causes of natural phenomena, and into the nature of our existence were not seen as separate modes of inquiry requiring differing methods. Aristotle applied his methods as much to theology as he did to the natural world (Cohen & Reeve, 2020), and some two thousand years lated, the scientists Giordano Bruno and Isaac Newton—scientists in terms of our understanding of them today—focused a great deal more on theology than they did on the endeavors that we would presently consider properly scientific.
Newton was an unorthodox but deeply devout Christian who did not partition his magical, religious, and theological thinking. According to the article on Newton in the Macmillan Reference Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, “Isaac Newton the natural philosopher [i.e. the scientist] cannot be understood apart from his religion” (Van Huyssteen, 2003, p. 619). Newton had even gone so far as to confess to a friend that he saw his Principia—the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, the first great textbook of physics and one of the most important books in human history—as being primarily of theological significance (ibid.).
Newton adhered to a theological doctrine that had arisen in the Middle Ages called the Two Books. According to the Two Books doctrine, there is not just one sacred text in Christendom (that being the Bible) but rather two, with the other being the “Book of Nature” (ibid., p. 621), the natural, observable world. As I discussed last episode, the theories that Newton developed pointed to a mechanical, deterministic universe, an extraordinary clockwork mechanism whose existence indicated to him the existence of a divine mechanic behind the whole works. He saw the universe as being God’s handiwork and so to better understand the workings of nature was, for Newton, to better understand the nature of God, just as one might recognize the handwriting or idiomatic syntax or vocabulary of a particular writer when reading their works. The aforementioned encyclopedia article refers to this as the “weak relationship between science and religion”—religion as an inspiration for the pursuit of science (ibid.)—and also makes the case that there also exists, for Newton, a corresponding “strong relationship between science and religion,” an inclusion of religious thinking in the content of his scientific work:
Newton’s conception of space and time is thoroughly imbued with a profound sense of God’s omnipresence and omnitemporality. For Newton absolute space is rigid and immovable, thus providing a stable frame of reference within which relative motion occurs. All of this is possible because absolute space is coextensive with God’s omnipresence, a belief Newton came to in part from his exposure to the Rabbinical notion of God as maqam (“place”). As J. E. McGuire put it, space for Newton was God’s “sacred field.” Similarly, Newton conceived of absolute time as flowing evenly and uniformly largely because it is coterminus with God’s eternal duration. Newton’s calculus also depended on his conception of absolute time, which for Newton rested on a belief in God’s eternal, evenly flowing duration.
ibid., p. 622
The article concludes (and this will be relevant to the discussion further on):
Although it is clear that Newton recognized disciplinary and methodological distinctions, the lack of firm barriers within Newton’s intellectual life suggests that it is problematic to speak in terms of “influence” of one sphere on another. Instead, Newton’s lifework evinces one grand project of uncovering God’s truth. Science and religion for Newton were not two completely distinct programs, but two aspects of an integrated whole. For Newton, the unity of truth meant that there was ultimately one culture, not two.
ibid., p. 623
Before Newton was the Golden Age of Islam, the Abbasid Caliphate in the 8th to the 14th centuries. It is believed—though this is disputed—that the Islamic Caliph Harun al-Rashid had, during his reign in the late 8th century, founded a great library in Baghdad called the House of Wisdom. Al-Rashid collected books in various languages and had them translated into Arabic, including the philosophical writings of the ancient Greeks. Indeed, it was 9th and 10th century Islamic philosopher Abu Nasr Al-Farabi who preserved many of the writings of Aristotle which allowed them to be rediscovered by the West. For the Muslims of the Abbasid Caliphate, Aristotle was the First Teacher (and Al-Farabi the Second Teacher).
Looking at the Qur’an, it’s not difficult to find possible sources that may have inspired the Muslims of the Abbasid Caliphate in their love of science and learning. Throughout the text are descriptions of the natural world and suggestions that within these natural phenomena are signs “for those who are [intelligent, wise, thoughtful, understanding, etc…].” The 109th aya of the 18th surah of the Qur’an, one of my favorite verses in all of the sacred texts I’ve ever read, might be read as implying a Two Books doctrine similar to that of Isaac Newton: “‘If the whole ocean were ink for writing the words of my Lord, it would run dry before those words were exhausted’—even if We were to add another ocean to it” (trans. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem).
Regardless of however we might arbitrarily delineate between philosophy, science, and religion, if we take their claims as a whole, we find that many of them are in direct conflict. This is the case for the aforementioned claims about the age of the Earth. If Newton saw philosophy, religion, and science as being the same thing, he would, if confronted with modern evidence, be forced to come to the conclusion that claims resulting from some directions of investigation were in direct conflict with claims resulting from other sources. It may be that these conflicts are part of what instigated the separation between religion and science in the first place, but I haven’t been able to confirm that. The point is, for most of human history, claims about the natural world fell under the domain that we now designate as religion: claims about the age of the Earth, for example, were entangled with religious stories about its creation by one or more gods, and in general natural phenomena were explained by means of recourse to religious narratives. Later forms of inquiry (which we would now designate as being scientific) afforded us explanations that dispensed with gods and other supernatural phenomena. Looking at this process, it’s easy to think of the later scientific explanations as having abrogated the earlier religious ones, but this can only be the case if the religious explanations and the scientific explanations serve the same function. A hammer might be a more advanced tool than a rock for pounding in nails but you’re not going to replace the decorative rocks in your garden with hammers.
Imagine a parent has a child who is in preschool. One day the child brings home a drawing of the family, everyone together and smiling under a big yellow sun. The drawing is as primitive as one would expect from someone the child’s age, but the parent is effusive regardless and posts the drawing conspicuously on the refrigerator door using a magnet, where it remains for many years. Then one day, the parent returns home and finds that the drawing on the fridge has been replaced by a color photograph of the family together, taken as part of an assignment for the child’s high school photography class. When the parent asks what was done with the drawing, they learn that it had been thrown away. “Why would you want that old drawing?” the child asks. “A photograph is much more realistic.”
If you’re at all like me, you likely find something sad about this scenario. The child is certainly not wrong, strictly speaking: the photograph is indeed much more realistic. Should a family member ever go missing, the photo could be used to help with identification, whereas the drawing would be entirely useless in that regard. And beyond that, it may just be an excellent family photo, suitable for putting on the mantle or mailing to relatives. There may not be anything wrong with the photo in any respect, and yet we know that it cannot replace the drawing. Certainly the child’s drawing was an attempt at a realistic depiction, the best of which the child was capable at the time, but however much it may have failed in that respect, it succeeded in capturing something else entirely, something which we find intuitively valuable as humans.
This analogy risks portraying religion as something naive and childish, but consider a hypothetical visit to a museum of art: you’ll find numerous paintings by adult painters from all eras, some of them highly impressionistic or abstract and not at all realistic, and yet the notion of replacing all the paintings with photos because of the added realism is completely absurd.
The contemporary status of the relationship between religion and science is the focus of the useful and interesting book Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation (1995) by theologian John F. Haught. In his book, Haught presents a fourfold framework of the science-religion dynamic that places potential understandings of the relationship between the two into four categories: conflict, contrast, contact, and confirmation. The conflict model sees religion and science as fundamentally irreconcilable. One who adheres to this model believes that one of these is the correct and proper worldview and that the other is fundamentally erroneous. This is the understanding of hardline atheists who see religion as collections of antiquated beliefs that have been abrogated by scientific discoveries, and of fundamentalist Christians who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible and believe that the claims of science are lies promulgated by Satan to deceive the unwary.
The contrast model sees science and religion as not being in conflict because they have different domains. According to this understanding, science and religion have entirely different functions within the sphere of human discourse; any apparent conflicts between the two are the result of misunderstandings, attempts to direct religion towards matters of science or science towards matters of religion. The Genesis creation narrative would then serve its function as a story about the relationship between humans and God, with the factual, metaphysical questions about the age of the Earth left for science to answer. Accordingly, science can also tell us about the structure of the human genome, with questions regarding what we should do with that information left to religion. The evolutionary biologist Steven Jay Gould famously advocated for a version of this model which he called “non-overlapping magisteria” (commonly abbreviated as NOMA). The magisterium is, officially, the authority claimed by the Roman Catholic Church to be able to interpret scripture. We might think of a magisterium in broader terms as being a domain of interpretation, and according to Gould, the domains claimed by religion and science are strictly partitioned, with no overlap. Responding to Gould’s model in an article in the journal Free Inquiry entitled “When Religion Steps on Science’s Turf,” fellow evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins writes:
…[I]t is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science’s turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims.
…but this mistakes a key component of Gould’s claim. The non-overlapping magisteria model is normative rather than descriptive; Gould isn’t saying that science and religion don’t conflict, only that they needn’t if the boundary between the two is properly observed.
Next up in Haught’s framework is the contact model. “[Contact],” Haught writes, “agrees that science and religion are logically and linguistically distinct, but it knows that in the real world they cannot be as easily compartmentalized as the contrast position supposes” (1995, p. 17). The contact model understands science and religion as falling within domains (or magisteria) that are largely distinct but which do overlap, and which can be seen as reinforcing each other rather than coming into direct and irreconcilable conflict. Clarifying futher, Haught writes
Contact proposes that scientific knowledge can broaden the horizon of religious faith and that the perspective of religious faith can deepen our understanding of the universe. It does not strive to prove God’s existence from science but is content simply to interpret scientific discoveries within the framework of religious meaning. It does not seek to shore up religious doctrines by appealing to scientific concepts that may on the surface seem to point directly to a divine designer.
ibid., p. 18
Lastly is Haught’s extension of the contact model and the one for which his book ultimately advocates: the confirmation model. Starting with the premise of the contact model—that it is possible for the two fields of discourse to support each other—the confirmation model makes the additional claim that such support is not only possible but that religion is actually necessary to science, confirming and justifying the fundamental assumptions that make science possible. The basic idea here is that, in order to even begin the scientific endeavor in the first place, we need to make an a priori assumption (which Haught refers to—erroneously in my opinion—as being a kind of faith) that the world is ordered and consistent, and religion provides a justification for that assumption.
I have some problems here. I agree that science requires an a priori assumption about the rational and ordered nature of the universe. Science is only viable in principle if the world is indeed rational and consistent, and its being rational and consistent cannot itself be demonstrated scientifically, as that would result in circular reasoning. However, I’m not convinced that religion provides a grounding or justification for this assumption. Indeed, it seems that early religion pointed us in exactly the opposite direction. Under such a worldview, natural phenomena occurred not as natural events within a rational, well-ordered universe that the gods had created for us, but rather as the result of the capricious and unpredictable behavior of the gods themselves. We see this even in the early chapters of Genesis, with a global flood and other “natural” disasters that occured for reasons other than those that could have been understood through scientific inquiry. The Great Flood of the Bible occurred because God had made a value judgement regarding Their creation, and, as we’ve established, this is not something that can be evaluated scientifically. Further, the assumption that God created a rational universe is itself an a priori assumption which can only be justified through circular reasoning. The fact that the universe has more-or-less consistently yielded to our rational inquiries may lead us to an understanding of the nature of the divine, and religion can still inform us as to our implementation of scientific discoveries, but in this case we have merely fallen back to Haught’s contact model without affirming his confirmation model.
Despite my disagreement, Science and Religion remains quite useful. This fourfold framework that I’ve described is outlined in the book’s first chapter. The remaining chapters are focused on specific issues—does science rule out a personal God? Was the universe created? And others—with Haught presenting an argument on each issue from each of the four viewpoints he’s established. This approach has the added benefit of making the book an excellent study in argumentation, as Haught is able to argue clearly and effectively for positions he disagrees with without turning those arguments into strawmen or parodies.
Let’s proceed through an examination of Haught’s framework in practice as he applies it to the question of whether or not the universe has a purpose.
Arguing for the conflict model, Haught rightly points out that science has largely detached itself from the question of causes in the millennia following Aristotle, and indeed, it seems that the less science has concerned itself with causes, the more progress it’s made. Thus, science is not teleological—not concerned with causes and purposes—and indeed, nothing along the lines of any sort of “teleological mechanism”—some law of nature driving the universe towards a particular purpose—has ever been observed. This leads Haught’s argument to advocate for what he calls cosmic pessimism, an assertion that the universe is fundamentally purposeless, which has the additional effect of falsifying religion wholesale (pp. 166-170). Haught doesn’t argue for the religious side of the conflict model, but I would expect that the conflict-oriented religious adherent would see the universe as having a very clear and pervasive purpose, and see science as being falsified as a result of being unable to see this.
Haught’s argument for the contrast model is that it’s not at all surprising that science has been unable to uncover a purpose for the universe, as that’s simply not something that science is capable of doing. An understanding of such things as the purpose of reality and the meaning of life falls within the purview of religion, and this is indicative of science and religion’s respective non-overlapping magisteria (pp. 170-172)
Under the contact model, Haught argues that science poses questions of purpose that must in turn be addressed by religion, and that religion is strengthened by answering these questions. Religion’s job is to answer teleological questions, but they must be answered in the context of what science has told us about the universe. For example, whatever teleology the universe possesses must not be anthropocentric—focused specifically on us—because it’s clear that the universe is not an anthropocentric place. And Haught notes as well that science does not definitively present us with a purposeless universe: the process of entropy gives the universe direction and process which can be described, as religion does, through narrative, and which allows for such things as complexity and information (pp. 173-180).
Haught’s argument for the confirmation model is actually quite interesting, as he argues—and this can likely be taken as the argument he would personally endorse—that science is indeed mute on questions of teleology, but that religion is as well. For Haught, questions of purpose lie outside the scope of both science and religion: science for reasons already described in the prior arguments, and religion because to know the purpose of the universe would be to know the mind of God. The inability of religion to speak to teleology thus confirms the inability of science to do the same.
My own opinion on the matter falls somewhere between contact and confirmation: science does indeed present us with an evidently purposeless universe, and it’s up to us to find meaning and purpose within it through whatever means, including religion, but actual knowledge of the purpose of the universe or of human life is something that simply falls outside the human ken entirely.
Haught’s framework is, in my opinion, an accurate assessment of the possibilities for the perception of the relationship between religion and science. I, ultimately, endorse the contact model: religion is not necessary for science and does not in any way confirm its fundamental assumptions, but religion and science are intrinsically interrelated, with irrevocably overlapping magesteria, and, when the domains of each are properly observed, support and reinforce each other. I read Haught as seeing the conflict model as a threat to both science and religion, and I’m in agreement. Such a worldview forces one to choose between the two, which is problematic in either case. Religion without science risks detatchment from the real world, as we see with fundamentalist Christianity and its views on such things as evolution and the age of the Earth; and science without religion—or at least some tradition of meaning and values—risks its implementation for abhorrent purposes, such as nuclear weapons and the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.
All of this leads us to some final questions regarding science and religion, both general and particular to my audience: What does this mean for our daily lives? What should we believe about the world? What should we believe about science and religion and the relationship between the two? How should the Satanist pursue and hold knowledge, whether scientific or religious or otherwise? These questions and others will be the focus of the next essay.
I hope you’ve found this piece interesting and informative. If you’ve enjoyed it, I encourage you to look at some of my other essays, and if you find my approach to philosophy and religion at all valuable, I hope that you’ll stop in at my Patreon page, which features bonus content for patrons, and that you’ll stop back by to check on my new content.
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Cavanaugh, W. T. (2009). The myth of religious violence: Secular ideology and the roots of modern conflict. Oxford University Press.
Cohen, S. M., & Reeve, C. D. C. (2020). Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/
Collins, F. S. (2006). The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Free Press.
Dawkins, R. (1998). When Religion Steps on Science’s Turf. Free Inquiry, 18(2), 4.
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