Science and Religion

From Hemant Mehta, from whom I always get my theology, comes a fascinating bit of atheism:

For instance, there's been talk of finding a better way to reconcile science and religion. Whenever that battle takes place, religion loses.

There are some questions we may never know the answer to, but for the ones we can eventually answer, the scientific explanation will devour the religious one. Mixing science and religion requires a distortion of one or the other.

 I'm not against atheists; despite what they would like to think, it's a belief just like anything else. I myself have had my atheist days. But just as it is frustrating to see religious people saying stupid things, so is it frustrating to see atheists doing likewise. And there doesn't seem to be any process of becoming a more well-educated atheist; you just say, "Well, I don't believe in God," and suddenly you have as much a-religious authority as the most learned theologian.

Atheists frequently make the mistake of believing that a lack of belief in God is a be-all and end-all. That's like saying that a belief in God is a be-all and end-all.  It's not knowledge.

But to Mr. Mehta: science and religion are implacable foes and science always wins because it's true and religion is just a belief that can't be proven. One hears that a lot from the self-appointed anti-theologians of atheism.  Science is provable and true and thus is intrinsically better than religion and its explanations of reality are the truth. As reliable as Pat Robertson blaming natural disasters on gay people, probably more so.  And as ill-informed and annoying.

To say that science and religion are at war is to say things about both that are untrue and should be refuted by both sides. If you say that science will always trump religion, you're saying that science is addressing questions that by their very nature are unscientific.  You're saying science is interested in belief. Quick note: it isn't. In fact, that's what makes science so great; it doesn't give two shits about whether everyone in the world believes something. It cares about empiricism and experiment and data.

Snotty pre-atheists are always saying, "Oh yeah, well prove God exists and I'll believe." Or something similar in tone. The correct response to that is, "No, because science doesn't work that way." They won't listen, of course, because there's no form a-religious training, no way of teaching atheism to people; you just are one because. Science education stays out of religion (and rightly so) but it's possible that a class or two on "what science should and shouldn't be used to do," might be helpful.

But to pick on atheists isn't fair; there are plenty of religious types who reject science completely, saying that religion has all the answers and science is wrong, or that the conclusions science has reached are wrong because The Bible says so. They cite things as proof. Of them I ask, "You're saying that your belief requires proof?" It's called "belief" for a reason, and to have faith in something proven is about as hard as having faith which is never tested. We're supposed to be past the superstitious, magical phase, where we believed in spirits because they caused things to happen, because there was proof they existed. Faith shouldn't require proof.

To say that science will always win in a war against religion is a bit like saying that the Mona Lisa will always win in an art contest against the best chef in Paris' boeuf en croute. Yes, I suppose one could pit the two head-to-head, and one could treat a beautiful plating as a piece of art, but that would be just as silly as trying to eat the Mona Lisa to judge its quality.

And to say that mixing science and religion will cause a distortion of one or the other is like saying that you can't eat boeuf en croute while looking at the Mona Lisa.  Science deals with reality and proof. Religion deals with neither.

I guess this is my call for atheist scholarship that doesn't simply concentrate on the fact that religion is bad. Defining a cause is more than just negating its opposite (politicians could stand to learn that too). Tell me what's so great about atheism. Atheism isn't nihilism; what do atheists belief? It seems that there must be some sort of faith in reality, that the philosophers who have posited that we're not really here are incorrect, that experience defines reality, that there is certainty in empiricism, that because a thing has always been it will always be, that there are immutable laws of the universe. I'm not saying this to be snarky; there is nothing in the word "atheist" which means a rejection of belief, just a rejection of God. I think that the above beliefs are valuable, and with slight tweaks can become beliefs that the religious might (and perhaps should) share.

Atheism isn't science. To conflate the two does a disservice to science. Religion isn't science. They are not mutually exclusive unless the religious belief happens to run counter to the scientific discovery or the religion specifically targets science as being anathema. And in fairness, many religious sects seem to take that avenue. Science will probably win there simply because rejecting science is rejecting reality, and we seem to be living in a world where reality is more important. That wasn't always the case, let us remember.  But science won't "beat" religion just because it might make some members of some faiths question the teachings of those faiths which clash with science and reality. This isn't a contest. There are no points scored for "converts" to either side.

Will atheism beat other belief systems? That's a fairer, but not terribly interesting, question. One might as well ask if Islam will beat Baha'i. It might, in the sense that Islam might wind up containing followers while Baha'i might be left with none. But is that a measure of victory in religion? Does a belief really work by majority rule? Does being believed by more people "prove" a belief, any more than any other attempt to do so?  So even if atheism takes over the world, even if there are no non-atheists left on Earth, will that have "proved" atheism's beliefs to be true?

Belief cannot fight reality; it will lose. But reality also cannot fight belief if belief refuses to fight. I can believe I can raise the dead, but the first time you show up with a random dead body and I can't bring it back to life, you may have your doubts and reality may seem to be trumping my belief (and yours, if you happen to believe that I can do what I say). Sure, I can come up with excuses, but eventually you're going to want me to do something which would violate reality, and I won't be able to or explain it away, and you'll stop believing in me.

But suppose I say that one day, the dead will rise and go to a magical place where they'll live again in a world where there is no suffering, no sin. Is that a fight with reality, or is that something which can be believed without proof? Reality can't really prove me wrong because it hasn't happened yet, and who knows?

"Who knows?" is another one of those powerful questions, like, "Who am I to judge?" Yes, it can be lazy to say, "Who knows?" in the face of questions, but with respect to the future? Scientists and theologians alike can join together and say, "Who knows? It might yet happen in the fullness of time."

If one makes a statement of prediction, whether scientific or belief-based, and that prediction fails to come to pass, that might damage the rule or belief on which the prediction is based. But it doesn't damage either science or faith to acknowledge that such predictions sometimes cannot be made, or that some predictions may be indefinite. They are beliefs, either based in reality or in faith, and they cannot be disproved unless they conflict with reality.

Can science and faith coexist? As long as they stay out of each other's way. It is no more reasonably to try to disprove the existence of God than it is to attempt to read Genesis as geology. Where one or the other loses, it's because they've overstepped their bounds. I hope, at some point, some scientists realize that atheism is trying to do just that.