Science/Angels and Religion/Demons and Vice Versa, Part 1

There are few topics that command my academic interest the way that the relationship between science and religion does. I grew up in a fairly conservative, God-fearing part of the country to non-practicing but generally faithful Christian parents. They specifically raised me in a quasi-secular and intellectually open fashion, in that I was given all the opportunities to learn about science unfiltered by the political and religious ideologies of the curriculum setters. I spent much of my childhood reading about dinosaurs and other fossils of the geological strata, about the formation of the the stars, galaxies and planets, and of the great biodiversity of our planet. And, while we didn't go to church regularly, they did send me to vacation Bible school every year, I suspect so they felt less guilty about not making weekly Sunday outings mandatory, but also to "give us the information," so to speak, that we might make our moral, social, and intellectual decisions based on a secular humanist as well as religious education. My dad has told me numerous times that he wanted us to "decide for ourselves." In general, I've developed into quite the agnostic, and although I disliked Bible school when I went, in retrospect, I'm rather glad that I was given this education for its literary, historical, and cultural merits. I think I would be overstepping my position to say that I could somehow speak for the middle ground in the current culture war that seems to be raging around the non-issue of science vs. religion, but my studies into the philosophies and history of both fields have given me at least some understanding of the complex interplay of the two most powerful institutions of the 21st century.

Most recently, I've been thinking about this issue because of the release of Ron Howard's Angels and Demons last month. I read the book about a week before seeing the movie and liked it alright, though it is heavy-handed and makes science and religion seem like two monolithic entities clubbing each other in their isolated, hermetically sealed, cookie-cutter worlds. The movie improves on some of this, and unlike The Da Vinci Code, does a slightly more even-handed and nuanced job of portraying the relationship between religion and science. It is about as good of a job as one could do turning Angels and Demons into a movie, but unfortunately, that doesn't really help matters. The problem I have with the book and the movie, is that it simply exploits the perceived conflict and paints both religion and science without the depth, complexity, and intricacies that define their intertwined histories. Of course, a third-rate thriller novel and a summer popcorn piece are hardly the places for subtlety and exploration of dynamism, but I am dismayed to see the rich tapestry of these two establishments reduced to a good guy/bad guy relationship.

Contrary to popular opinion, science and religion have not always been at odds in the way they seem to be today. For most of Western history, in fact, they have acted in concert with one another, with theological concepts motivating physical discovery and natural philosophy informing theology. Pioneering this historical theory of the interplay between these two seemingly disparate institutions are historians such as David C. Lindbergh and Ronald Numbers, as well as several scholars within the scientific and religious communities, such as Ian Barbour, Stephen J. Gould and John Polkinghorne, who, though their views differ wildly, nevertheless advocate a greater understanding between the two. Lindbergh and Numbers in particular are critical of what is known as the Conflict Thesis, or the Draper-White Thesis, which enjoyed almost universal currency in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Conflict Thesis, as its name implies, envisioned a relationship always at odds, in which religious institutions conservatively and authoritatively forbade any scientific teaching contrary to Biblical dogma, and science played the role of downtrodden bearer of light amidst the darkness. However, as is often the case, more can be gleaned about the society that proposed the theory than the society on which it comments. Most modern interpretations of the Conflict thesis contend that the discord envisioned was a contemporary outcropping of two currents of thought specific and novel to this era: the emergence of a coherent theory of evolution and the beginnings of fundamentalist Christian belief. And it was the latter, which, though commonly believed to hearken back to earlier, more "pure" Christian motives, was really a reactionary response to what was perceived to be an out-of-control progress towards a more secularly oriented society. As the great religious historian Karen Armstrong has noted, fundamentalism (not only Christian, but Islamic, Hindu, and Jewish) is a peculiarly modern institution, designed primarily to act as a traditionalist check against the march of progress, embodied particularly by the scientific enterprise and the liberal open societies of Western democracy. In the political sphere, social scientist from all political stripes have pointed to the commonalities between the ultimate goals of Muslim extremists in the Middle East and their fundamentalist Christian counterparts in the United States - the only difference being that the relative weakness and corruption of political institutions in the Islamic world compared to the West has given these radical extremists a modicum of real power in places such as Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. The centuries of Western history including such formational movements as the Reformation, Enlightenment, and Scientific Revolution, as well as the setbacks such as the Thirty Years War and World Wars, have given Western society an infrastructure in which Church and State are by and large separated. In other words, our own society guards against just such extremists coming to power. The Christian version of this vein of fundamentalist thinking is relegated to bloggers, radio personalities, and televangelists, who are no less extreme, at least in their rhetoric, than their Muslim counterparts:

When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will be no Satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no more talk of rights for homosexuals. After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not permit anybody the right of practicing evil.
-Gary Potter, President of Catholics for Political Action

Hostility toward America is a religious duty, and we hope to be rewarded for it by God . . . . I am confident that Muslims will be able to end the legend of the so-called superpower that is America.
-Osama bin Laden

When I, or people like me, are running the country, you'd [abortion providers] better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we will execute you. I mean every word of it."
-Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue

There is no reform except through jihad. . . We have to realize the nature of this conflict: Our enemies do not agree with or approve of our rights.
-Ayman al-Zawahiri

I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good. . . Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism. Our goal must be simple. We must have a Christian nation built on God's law, on the Ten Commandments. No apologies.
-Randall Terry

If a woman wants to work away from her home and with men, then that is not allowed by our religion and our culture. If we force them to do this they may want to commit suicide.
-Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, Taliban Minister of Justice

We should invade their [Muslims'] countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.
-Ann Coulter

Sorry, Ann, but the Crusading Age has been over for about 700 years. But what does this have to do with science and religion? A lot actually. The point of the above quotes is not to disparage Christian belief but to demonstrate the true radicalism that these outliers represent. Just as we consider Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and other Muslim extremists a plague on civilized society, so too should we consider those preaching hatred in the name of Christianity in this country. And the people who are most responsible for the religious attack on science are these very authors, organizers, "thinkers" (if I may stretch this word to its barest of connotations) and extremists. This fringe element should be treated exactly as it is: fringe. True, these people have more power and influence in the United States than in most other industrialized nations, but they have no power, for example, to impede scientific research in evolutionary biology or particle physics, both of which are unlocking secrets about the universe once solely reserved for the domain of religion. Their power lies in opening a Creation Museum and electing politicians with sympathetic, albeit less extreme views. Some statistics are troubling, such as a recent poll showing that a mere 39% of Americans accept the theory of evolution (compared to 80 or 90% in most other industrialized nations). But overall, science and religion are not mortally opposed to one another the way our media, political structure, and entertainment industry seem to believe.

In my next post on the topic, I will explore the historical relationship between science and religion and why they have not always been and need not currently be at odds, the fact that even the terms "science" and "religion" simplify the problem too much as it assumes that these blanket terms cover all facets of these two dynamic institutions, and finally, examine what appropriate relations between the two should be in the twenty-first century.