When we think of science and religion we often think of conflict. We think of people like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins claiming that science has disproved the claims of religion, and of Christians who argue against them. We also think of our own acquaintances who believe that modern science has made religion obsolete.
On the day to day level the conflict is less obvious. Many good scientists have a strong religious faith. Many Christians find that their relationship with God deepens as they read of new scientific knowledge of how the world came to exist and about the genetic building blocks of life. Such a wonderful and complex world speaks to them of a wonderful God.
In this 'Explorations' we shall look at how the conflict between religion and science began, and how best to think of the relationship between them. We shall also explore how science and religion can feed into one another.
How science and religion came into conflict
The conflict between science and religion is comparatively recent. In Christian faith God made the world open to our knowledge and exploration. God also encourages us to ask questions about our world and about God's relationship to it. Science and religion are like independent sisters. Each explores the nature of reality, but from different perspectives.
But it is possible for sisters to fight instead of being best friends. So too with religion and science. There have been two great stories of conflict. The first was that of Galileo in the sixteenth century. On the basis of astronomical evidence he claimed that the earth revolved around the sun. Catholic authorities had difficulty with this interpretation of the evidence because it seemed to conflict with their interpretation of Biblical texts that placed the earth at the centre of the universe. Finally the Church condemned Galileo's interpretation.
Later Catholics have recognised that the Catholic interpretation at that time of the significance of the biblical texts was faulty. But Galileo has continued to be a strong symbol of the independence of science from religious control.
The second great story of conflict between science and religion focused on Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century. On the basis of his study of fossils Darwin proposed that the world had evolved through natural selection. So the different species of living beings were not created separately, but were part of a chain of life evolving over thousands of years.
To many Christians this interpretation seemed to be inconsistent with the Biblical accounts of creation. They attacked Darwin's interpretation on religious grounds, and tried to find scientific evidence that would disprove it.
As in the case of Galileo, later Christians have come to recognise that much Christian interpretation of the significance of the creation stories in Genesis was faulty. These stories were not concerned to talk scientifically about how the world began, but to explore God's relationship to the world. But, like Galileo, Charles Darwin continues to be a powerful symbol of the independence of science.
The cases of Galileo and Darwin persuaded many people that you had to choose between the interpretations of science and religion offered by science and Christian faith. To be faithful to Scripture, Christians thought they had to believe that the sun revolved around the earth, and that living species were created separately and did not evolve from one another. To be faithful to scientific method, scientists thought they had to deny that God had any part in the making of the world.
Because scientists were successful in answering so many large questions about the world, and because their discoveries improved human life so greatly, many people looked to them for advice about the ultimate questions of why the world existed and how to live good and happy lives. But their science did not equip them to answer these questions.
Scientific and religious questions about the world
Science and religion need not come into conflict. They deal with different kinds of questions. Religion asks the large questions about why anything exists at all, and what is the purpose of creation and of each human life. These are important questions that cannot be answered by using telescopes or microscopes.
Religious teachers and philosophers have been engaged with these questions, and have given many different answers to them. Christians believe that God has communicated with us through the history of the Jewish people and through the life, death and rising of Jesus. In Christ we find the answers to what matters most deeply. We gain an understanding of what God is like, why the world exists and how we should live.
Science deals with another kind of question. It asks how the world works and how it came to have the shape we see. Scientists examine the evidence they gather from their examination of the world, and offer interpretations which they test by appeal to further evidence.
Like theologians who argue among themselves about the interpretation of the Scriptures, scientists will often argue about their interpretations of the natural world. But they do not, and should not, appeal to scripture or to the Church in favour of their interpretations. The Biblical story that God made the world in seven days does not throw light on how the world developed. That is why John Paul II insisted that evolution was more than a theory.
So faith and religion deal with different questions. They come into conflict when religious people or scientists appeal to their own expertise to answer questions that lie outside their field. They can also come into conflict when scientists' desire to explore the world comes into conflict with ethical truths. To test new and dangerous drugs on prisoners, for example, or to clone human beings might expand our knowledge, but it would lack respect for the preciousness of each human being.
How religion and science fit together
So far we have emphasised the reasons why religion and science have come into conflict, and how the conflict is unnecessary if we keep in mind the different questions they deal with. But the right relationship is not simply about avoiding conflict, still less about dividing people into religious people and scientists.
All human beings sometimes ask themselves questions that have to do with science and with religion. When we are in the bush looking at a starlit sky, we can wonder at the beauty and complexity of what we see, and ask why this beautiful world exists. And then we can notice a satellite weaving its way across the sky, and ask ourselves how fast it is going and when it will fall to earth. It is natural to ask both kinds of questions. And they feed into one another.
The beauty, the complexity and the greatness of the world have always led people to wonder why such a world exists. They help people of faith to see God's presence and power in the world. The Psalms are full of descriptions of nature that celebrate God's greatness and power. Monks have often spent hours praying under the stars and in the desert. From time to time all of us are taken out of our everyday practical world when struck by the power of the sea or of storms and by the beauty of sunset. We find ourselves saying a prayer of gratitude for such power and such beauty.
As we learn more about scientific discoveries, too, we come to wonder at the delicacy and the complexity of things that we would otherwise have taken for granted. The extraordinary complexity of the genetic code, for example, can fill us with wonder at the mystery of the God on whom these things depend.
If we wonder at the world and reflect on God's relationship to it, we may be encouraged to ask more detailed questions about the world in which we live. A deep sense of God's presence in the world inspired many great scientists to make scientific discoveries. Isaac Newton's research was inspired by his faith, as was the work of the monk, Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics. They believed that God made a world that we can come to understand, and pursued science to seek a deeper understanding of God's mind.
At a deeper level science and religion influence one another because they shape the way in which we see our world. They touch our imagination, which nurtures our faith and our scientific enquiry. Our imagination gives shape to what we believe makes our world seem coherent. It also shapes our relationship to God. You can recognise the extent to which scientific discoveries enrich the way we imagine God if you compare our view of the universe with that of much earlier generations.
Until relatively modern times people saw the earth as the centre of creation, with the heavenly bodies encircling it. They also placed creation and the beginning of the human race at an imaginable time, envisaging the different species of living things as created separately.
Now we have been trained to see the earth as one of many small planets revolving around the sun, within one of many possible systems separated from us by distances beyond imagining. And the universe we can reach may be only one of many universes. We imagine human beings, too, as evolving from life forms that go back millions of years.
This very different way of imagining world need not change our faith. We may still believe that that God has made the world and loves each human being intimately and infinitely. We can still pray the same prayers we find in the Scriptures and recite the creeds of our ancestors. But we are confronted with the mystery and immenseness of God in a way that our ancestors need not have been.
We can only wonder at a God who calls into being a universe within which we human beings and our life span are so apparently insignificant, yet loves each of us tenderly and passionately. Seen in this way the mystery of God is beyond our understanding. But the mystery of God is a warm mystery of love, not a cold mystery of distance.
Other scientific discoveries will also shape the way we imagine God's relationship to us. If we imagine the world as a machine in which all the relationships are clearly defined and as governed by unbreakable scientific laws, for example, we shall imagine God creating the world like a clock maker, so that all parts fit together accurately. But if we see the building blocks of the universe as both constant and surprising in their relationships, we shall wonder at the precarious order of our world. We shall imagine God's activity as creator as intimate, trusting and playful.
As scientists discover more about the universe and human life, we shall be increasingly able to change the way we live. We have already seen the power of nuclear energy to destroy life and to support it. Our increasing understanding of the human genetic structure may also enable us to dream of modifying living beings, including human beings, to help feed populations and to eradicate hereditary diseases.
But if these capacities are to enhance human life and not destroy it, we shall have to confront the large questions that science does not answer. We must ask whether we would be right do all the things we know that it is possible for us to do. This means exploring the effects that our actions will have on human beings, on our society and on our environment. These are human questions with which religion and philosophy deal.
Faith and science deal with different kinds of human questions. They are sisters who can enrich one another by their friendship. If the world is to have a better future, they will need to cooperate.
Resources
The Pontifical Academy of Sciences
www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/adscien/