One of the enduring controversies over the
years has been the purported conflict between science and religion. An
alternate view is that religion and science are complimentary paths to knowledge,
not opponents at all. Long ago, St. Augustine said “the book of nature and the
book of Scripture were both written by the same author, and will not be in
conflict when properly read and understood.”
Among scientists who attend to matters of
religion, one of the most famous quotes from the 20th century is this couplet
by Pope John Paul II, circa 1987:
Science can purify
religion from error and superstition;
Religion can
purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.
I doubt that many scientists have ever
thought much about the word "idolatry"; the typical reaction
would be "who, me?" In science, it's hard to imagine what the
word "idolatry" could possibly mean.
Separately, "The Teaching
Company" publishes CDs and DVDs on a wide assortment of course materials,
including one cluster on world religions, which contains a set of lectures on
Hinduism. Within that, there is a remarkably concise definition of
idolatry: “confusing your own concept (or model or image) with the actual
reality.”
Whether in Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism
or any other religion, that's a pretty clear warning not to think that your own
understanding of God is fully accurate. When the 10 Commandments prohibits
making graven images, we immediately think of physical objects like a golden
calf standing in for a god. Of course we see the folly of that, and take the
warning seriously. Several faiths disapprove of any images at all, lest those
inferior representations become the object of worship.
About the only graven-image superstition
still around today is the essentially humorous custom of burying a statue of
some patron-saint-of-realtors in your back yard, in order to make your house
sell faster. That gets a chuckle out of almost everyone, including the folks
who plant the statue.
But now let's think about science, and
examine that Hindu definition of idolatry again. For several centuries now, we
have had some scientific models of nature that are exceptionally good.
Newton's Classical Mechanics is perhaps the earliest shining
example. It accounted for things in motion on earth, and even for the motions
of the planets.
When slight abnormalities were found, LaPlace
introduced perturbation theory to explain them. By the late
19th century, Classical Mechanics was complete and so good that scientists
believed the world was deterministic. Scientists had a very
good theory, and believed it represented nature perfectly.
That was idolatry: thinking that your
model truly represented the underlying reality. Around the turn of the
20th century, nobody thought to call it idolatry, but churchmen who accepted
the determinism implicit in Classical Mechanics found themselves backed into a
corner trying to defend the notion of free will. It was an awkward time for
religion.
Events of the 20th century exploded that
particular false absolute, and today we have "The Standard Model," a
combination of Quantum Chromodynamics and General
Relativity. It's an uneasy partnership, with physicists aware of the need
to patch things together and refine the model. There may be a danger of once
again believing that a new model represents nature perfectly, as suggested by
Hawking and Mlodinow's 2010 book "The Grand Design," where they said
the universe created itself. All physicists wish for a
"theory of everything," so the temptation toward idolatry will always
be there. Forbearance against that temptation is a virtue displayed by those
who remember the history of physics.
The factor that saved physics is the
predominance of observational data over theory. Richard Feynman's famous quote
is taught to every grad student: "It doesn't matter how beautiful
your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with
experiment, it's wrong." Because data trumps theory, today
physicists are puzzling about dark matter and dark energy. It is theory that
has to change. The phrase "facts are stubborn things" comes to mind.
No false absolutes are allowed.
Meanwhile, over in the life sciences, the
theory of Evolution has great explanatory power, and is far more comprehensive
than any alternative theory. The combination of Darwin's three cornerstone
principles (random mutation, natural selection, and deep time) coupled
with knowledge of DNA and genetics gives us the "Neo-Darwinian
Synthesis," which is nearly bulletproof. A large majority are convinced
that this model represents nature perfectly. This belief is so dominant in
biology that you're better off changing careers rather than challenging it. To
an objection like "time isn't deep enough," or
"there is irreducible complexity," the prevailing
orthodoxy of biology imperiously responds that pretty soon those annoying
little discrepancies will be figured out, so get out of the way. There is
only a very faint echo of Pope John Paul II's words cautioning against idolatry
and false absolutes.
A new temptation towards idolatry has
arisen along with the advances in computing power. Enormously complex
models of the climate of the entire globe run on supercomputers, and the output
results are sold as accurate representations of what nature does and what
it will do. National and international policies about energy supplies
are driven by decisions stemming from belief in these models. There is enormous
momentum behind their predictions, mostly provided by people who don't actually
know the science itself, but want to believe that scientific
models account for nature perfectly. Cautionary phrases like "mathematical
chaos" and "data first" go unheeded in the rush to believe in a
perfect theory.
This is one very pernicious example of
false absolutes, because when such policy decisions are implemented, the
impoverished countries of the world are denied the energy sources they need to
improve their economies. If religious leaders across the world stood up
and called this belief in computer models "idolatry," it would be a
good first step toward re-focusing international attention on practical
solutions to contemporary problems facing humanity.
Idolatry has been a recurring stain across
all of human history, and each time one form is eliminated, it pops our
somewhere else. Within science, recurring instances of false absolutes slip by
unnoticed, allowed to propagate unchallenged for long periods of time – and
ultimately producing very negative consequences.
Religion can purify science from idolatry
and false absolutes.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/12/idolatry_in_science.html#ixzz4TP2oPRSh
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