Reconciling Science and Religion

This is a perennial question that minds far superior to mine spent their whole lives attempting to solve. Despite this, I put forth my own interpretation of the issue in light of where I currently stand at this moment in time, with the knowledge that I have encoded, and feel I have to come to understand. What are your thoughts?

Introduction

Over the past 500 years or so — since the Scientific Revolution — a seismic and revolutionary shift has been occurring. The prominence and acceptance of modern science has increased exponentially while the dominance of traditional religion has been steadily declining. Evidently science and religion share an inverse relationship, because to accept one almost by definition necessitates the rejection of the other. With increasing life experience I have come to realise that there truly are two sides to every story, and that there are rarely absolute truths. With this in mind, I shall parse out why this change has occurred and the significant implications it would appear to usher upon us.

How did this come to be?

Human beings are amazing. We often unintentionally fall into the trap of exclusively focusing our attention on the failings and incompetence of our race. These are many and there are examples all around us. Yet our incredible feats are so embedded and taken for granted that we actually have to stop and really think in order to realise what kind of an incredible world we have built.

When you look around at the buildings, the smooth functioning of society, and even the fact that we can get along in communities of thousands of people it leaves you amazed. For a couple of million years we lived in small tribes — so this represents a tectonic shift. Our technological advancements were once unimaginable, and showcase how inventive and progressive we are as a species.

Benefits of science

We have a great deal to be thankful for the role science has played in all of this. Our virtual eradication of plagues, war, and famine in the twenty first century has been the result of technological advancements and a scientific approach to solving problems. One hundred years ago the concept of driverless cars or the availability of antibiotics would have been beyond comprehension.

I have an enormous degree of respect for, and belief in, the efficacy of science and its methodology. The scientific way of thinking is a great orientation to have in this world, and ensures that we filter out the objective from the subjective.

Limits of science

Some people, such as neuroscientist Sam Harris, believe that science can provide us with the basis for our morality. But as the Scottish philosopher David Hume once stated, “you cannot derive an ought from an is”. What he means by this is that knowing the objective facts of a situation does not assist or direct us as to how we should act, given those set of facts. This makes perfect sense. We tend to define reality as objective, but in fact our realities are so heavily influenced by our individual perceptions that there is a great deal of subjectivity involved in our construction of the world.

Whilst not all atheists are scientists, almost all scientists tend to be atheists. It is understandable why. Their rational, objective formula for interpreting the world simply cannot accept the sometimes farfetched claims of religion. A paradoxical facet of the scientific community that I have often wondered about is how their unwavering belief in the validity of the scientific model is itself a form of religious ideology — at the very least a form of dogma against which these rationalists so vehemently detest.

Limits of religion

Unquestioning acceptance of religious texts written by man thousands of years ago is incompatible with our cognitive evolution and modern day intellectual standards. Some of the ideas preached by religious thinkers have been abhorrent and psychologically damaging to many people. However these are not problems inherent to religion itself, but to the corruptibility of man. Immorality, greed, and a lust for power have seen religious teachings misconstrued and misinterpreted to propagate a certain narrative that has benefited the individuals and groups espousing such teachings.

Religion (in its purest form, not as an institutionalised power) has provided us with an untold amount of good. Not only did it provide people with an inherent meaning to their life but it provided a value system that facilitated and encouraged great acts of kindness and compassion throughout generations. Of course, religion does not have a monopoly on morality. Non-religious people can be just as moral as religious people, religious people just as immoral as anyone else (in fact, religious people often display the most disturbing levels of intolerance). A lot of our accepted moral values are historic and derive their origins from religious texts themselves, and thus such distinctions have become somewhat blurred.

Is it intellectually lazy to accept something like religion without concrete proof or validation? For me, this is a question of priorities and what you believe to be ‘real’. There are certain things in life that would appear to be unexplainable and require a degree of blind faith. I do fear that that statement may lose the more scientifically militant among us. Personally, I derive an enormous amount of satisfaction and fulfilment from believing that there is an omnipotent force beyond these decaying physical bodies we occupy for what is a cosmic nanosecond. I simultaneously acknowledge that if I truly believed in the scientific model, this would not be a compatible belief to hold. I have also had what felt like transcendent experiences that altered my state of consciousness — I remember a very real sense of oneness whilst deeply immersed in nature — yet again I recognise that this could merely be a release of neurochemicals or my own placebo effect. But I’m ok with this ambiguity, because right now nobody has the definite answer either way.

Why we need a value system

In the nineteenth century the philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche announced that “God is dead”. What is often overlooked is the fact that Nietzsche said that humans themselves had killed God, and that this would be to our utmost peril. Even he could not have foreseen the atrocities that would mar the twentieth century as nations and states experimented with and implemented new value structures into their societies that, although theoretically legitimate, in practice caused havoc and death to its people. For example, communism posited that fulfilment could be derived from satisfaction of material needs. This proved to be very wrong.

Have you ever tried to adhere to a diet or wake up early for a defined period of time and stick to it precisely? Exactly. Human beings are not perfectly rational beings. We are subject to our impulses and unconscious desires, which govern much of our motivations and desires without us realising it. Therefore having a set of values that can be applied universally is superior to having to objectively rationalise every single situation we encounter. A principle provides us with more utility than a method because whilst the method is specific, the principle is universally applicable.

“Ideals should inspire us to surpass ourselves, which we need to aspire to do if we are to be truly human, and which we can never actually do, exactly because we are truly human. Ideals are tools for inspiration, not realities in themselves. If rightly understood, ideals make us light-hearted and give a sense of direction”. — Zen Abbot Norman Fischer

Whether we like it or not, we will always strive to have something outside of ourselves to believe in. Religion may be a fading force, but already imitative replacements are being put forth. Futurists and the folk in Silicon Valley are envisioning themselves as soon to be immortal deities, with the solution to natural death becoming an ever-closer reality. The devotion ascribed to technology and things like Artificial Intelligence could also become new entities that we worship as a species. The name may change, but the form stays the same.

Conclusion

I think we dismiss our historical value systems at our peril. Science has the potential capacity to one day derive an equation that could hypothetically provide us with a sufficient value structure. But that day has not yet arrived, and until it does, I would argue that we need a belief system that can ascribe some meaning to our life beyond an objective assessment of the world. People descend into nihilism when they can no longer find meaning to their lives. The scientific world view appears too restrictive to fulfil our philosophical and spiritual needs.

Before disregarding our historical religious teachings, we would be wise to derive and extract the true essence of these teachings for our benefit, to reassess and update these value systems. Values that caused suffering or didn’t provide utility were killed off by natural selection. The authenticity and trueness of the meta-values that remain are self-evident by the fact that they have withstood the test of time.

Lastly, I would like to restate my admiration for science. It has benefited our society beyond measure. Yet this does not afford it carte blanche to occupy dominion over every facet of our lives. I believe that science (at least right now) has its limits. It can provide us with most answers to life, but perhaps it cannot provide us with the requisite answers to the metaphysical questions of life.

The Ithaca Diaries