Religion, Atheism,
and Science
I often encounter people who challenge my faith. This was not only true when I was in college at Harvard; it is true now that I am a professor working in the academy, especially in the fields of science, and now that I live in a progressive enlightened city like Portland. Many of these individuals think think religious faith is silly, illogical, even harmful. They are proud to be humanistic atheists, and they proclaim their atheism with head held high. They see it as the most intellectually honest position and also the most free and affirming. They see religion as contradictory to science. I don't, but we'll come to that. First, in talking with those who don’t share my faith, I realize immediately a
problem. I want to talk about God. How can I or anyone talk about God? It is
bad enough that the word “God” is laden with excess meaning and “baggage” for
everyone today, so it is difficult to hear what we mean.
But even worse: what I want to talk about defies language in the first place.
But even worse: what I want to talk about defies language in the first place.
What answer can science possibly make to this? Talk of God refers to a dimension of human experience beyond understanding, yet absolutely important. It begs for understanding, it invites to new horizons. To dismiss it as “indigestion” is possible only for unimaginative minds. Lives are changed, for the better (and I suppose, sometimes not the better).
Here I am helped by Elizabeth Johnson, in her
book “Quest for the Living God.” I share the conviction she traces in her
introduction to that book, straight from the central arc of Catholic teaching,
traced through Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, on up to
twentieth century Catholic writers like Simone Weil, Flannery O’Conner, Thomas
Merton, and Karl Rahner. That conviction or “idea” is simply this: God is not a
“thing among things” and therefore cannot be described in language.
In the life of the individual, faith arises in many ways--it is transmitted by family, or one has an experience that draws one in to conversion. I suspect it is extremely rare that one sits back and thinks their way to it, though perhaps this does happen. In the life of communities and civilization, religion arises as a consequence of a direct experience of God. After this, religion, not the other way around. The trappings of religion: Theology and belief and ritual, all come after there has been an experience. Even now, theology evolves not primarily by abstract thinking, but by communities experiencing God in new ways, and then reflecting on it. Therefore, “God’ is a language symbol. What of the reality, the real God beyond anyone’s concept of God? Does the real God care a whit about the “god” in which we profess to believe?
According to Johnson, Catholic teachers consistently
have held that all that is said about God is, if true, also at the same time
not true.
I could put it this way: Statements about God are not scientific forensic assertions. They are rather poor attempts to fit into words realizations and experiences that cannot be so fit. Simon Weil put it better: our beliefs are to be taken not as assertions to be affirmed or denied but as mysteries to be contemplated.
Thus all poetry; thus all theology. God can only be spoken about using analogy, or metaphor, or symbol, or story. God cannot be described.
Theism, as Johnson also puts it, is the opposite of this teaching. It is the conviction that God can be described, using factual language, as a thing among things (only bigger and better), as a philosophical polemic, and then either embraced or denied. It denies the paradox of true and not true, denies the reliance on metaphor or analogy in our language. Its two children are siblings who don’t get along at all. One sibling is liberal atheism that rejects such a God. The other sibling is traditionalist fundamentalism that affirms such a God.[1] Thus some scientists will tell me that I cannot be a scientist and a believer, and some Christians will tell me, after reading what follows, that I’m not really a Christian. Some atheists and some Christians will agree that I am not a Christian! This is because I will reject many tenets of fundamentalist religious doctrine. Ironically, then, while I am a scientist some scientists will say I cannot be, and while I am Christian, some Christians will say I am not!
One could say there are a range of logical positions. One can ask the basic question, "is there more?" To this, one can choose the range of belief, from "definitely not" to "I don't know" to "yes, but with the following qualifications" and on into different forms of specific belief. Science can co-exist with any of these positions; religion cannot co-exist with the "definitely not." But in each case, if we say there is or is not "something more" we must choose "which one do we mean." Which God do we reject--or affirm? Both atheists and many Christians reject the old fashioned punitive accountant in the sky. So which God do we reject, or affirm? This begs the question of how science and faith can coexist, or whether we must be atheist if we are to be thinking people.
So, what of atheism? Atheism attracts many good people, in part for its simplicity, reliance on reason, and focus on making this world better rather than waiting for a heaven later, which is seen as a failing of religion. However, conceptually, atheism doesn't work for me. It is rejection of the theistic
God, which I also reject. I am a person of faith. I am an intellectual, a scientist, an academic,
but not an atheist. As an academic in the United States, I live much of my time
in a place where spirituality is often kept quiet and where religious (at
least, Christian religious) profession and practice is sometimes looked on with
considerable suspicion. It is claimed by many secular humanists and by some
religionists that reason (science) and faith are opposites. I don’t think
so. Nor am I alone.
The West of the past 150 years is one in which religion
has ceased to be taken for granted, and is instead challenged by secular
atheism as well as relativism. At the extreme, public intellectuals have been
going on the offensive again lately to promote atheism and attack faith and
religion—and even sometimes to disown fellow scientists who practice religious
faith as intellectual hypocrites. So, there will be some in academic who will
disown me for affirming my identity as both man of science and man of faith.
Indeed what science is better equipped to challenge religion than psychology? I am a psychologist. Psychology demonstrates the human tendency to find pattern even where there is none, to make meaning even where there is none, to infer causality where there is none, to reason in a way that comforts our needs, rather than reflects reality, and to think by image and intuition rather than by cold calculation. My holding to both science and faith is dismissed by some of my fellow psychologists as merely proof of the power of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the human tendency to ignore information that threatens our identity and rationalize our way around the unpleasant input[2]. I also have met people outside academia who tell me that one cannot both be scientific and believe in God, so this theorem is also ‘on the street.’
The atheistic science argument “against religion” has generated a flurry of books and blogs dubbed by some observers “the new atheist noise machine.’[3] The arguments and ideas[4] are not actually new, but are getting renewed publicity and discussion. At the same time, scientists have been explaining their faith, at least disproving the idea that all academics are atheist agents.[5]
Well, are there really no contradictions between
religion and science?
The criticisms upon religion from a logical-scientific (or even logical positivist) viewpoint can take many lines. The most common stem from the idea that religion is merely a factual belief in absurd statements. It is compared by these skeptics to believing in the Easter bunny or Santa Claus, or UFO’s or paranormal powers; although the failure of the analogy is obvious--serious scientists never believe in Santa Claus but sometimes do believe in God. I will attempt to articulate in a moment my own response to this, which, like many others, rests on a rejection of the premise—religion has nothing to do with factual belief in absurd statements.
However, in the atheists defense, many religious people do seem to treat the belief assertions and dogmas of their religion as if they were facts about the natural world that could, for example, compete with science in explaining how biology works. Thus, the erroneous assumption of many atheistic critics is also an error made by many fundamentalist religious believers. For example, they claim that evolution contradicts religious teaching, as if the history of geology is somehow related to the core meaning of Holy Scripture.
A second line of objection to religion is driven by a perception that religion is a major cause of intolerance and bloodshed in our world. This line points to the wars of the middle ages in Europe (e.g, The 100 Years War), the Catholic Inquisition, the long conflict in Northern Ireland, the contemporary conflicts involving Muslim-identified peoples, religiously motivated attacks on or intolerance of gay people, and many other examples. Part of the motive of the French Revolution was the rejection of Catholic authority, symbolized by the formation of the Culte de Raison, or Cult of Reason[6]. They held, like many contemporary atheists, that reason will free us from superstition and tyranny, of which religious authority is seen as a part.
This is not entirely wrong. Religion has spawned a great deal of hatred and inter-group conflict. It is sometimes difficult to determine whether these are truly accidental misuses of religion, or somehow core to the nature of religion, at least in its fundamentalist forms. At the very least, it is obvious that we can see disturbing contradictions between what is universal in religious teaching—anchored in compassion and justice--and the intolerant and hateful behaviors that people claim are justified by devotion to their god or their religion. At the same time, the line of argument fails as a logical objection to religious faith per se. One can point to as many examples of exemplary behavior by religious people as to reprehensible ones, and great religious figures are at least as easy to identify as great humanist figures. Further, one can point to as many examples of atrocities by atheists and humanists as by religious societies, suggesting that we cannot so easily explain the world’s agonies and conflict (if only we could!). Stalin killed many to eliminate religion; the atheistic regime in Beijing remains busy eliminating religion in Tibet; the atheistic regime in Burma did the same until recently. Even the French revolutionaries, in their devotion to pure reason, slaughtered many too (though perhaps not as badly as their enemies, still slaughter is slaughter). We can accurately judge no approach to life based on its worst.
The nature of inter-group conflict among human groups is a topic of intense scientific study in psychology, sociology, anthropology, and other disciplines. There are laws to be learned and noted there, but one central message seems to be that tribal identification (religious or otherwise) drives inter-group mistrust and violence. Not religion per se, but religion when it serves as the defining identity of a tribe bent on conflict. Thus, abolishing religion (if it could be done) would likely do no more to end fratricide, homicide, or genocide than would abolishing atheism. Sadly, the history of human inter-group conflict tells us something about our human psychology, but little or nothing about the meaning of religion, even less about the meaning of religious experience or lived religious faith.
So I hold that both of these initial attacks
on religion (that it is illogical and that it is hypocritical) are not fundamentally effective. They do not persuade me, upon close inspection. However, there
is a third line of conflict between science and faith that is not specious or,
at least, that gets to the essence of the matter. It is often overlooked even
by critics of religion.
That is this, the most important intellectual issue for faith and science concerns the assumption of materialism. Strictly speaking, science is materialistic: it must assume that all phenomena can ultimately be explained by material or physical laws.
Yes, the simplistic premise that God as a “thing” among other “things” in the world (only bigger) is easily dismissed with little effect on lived faith, for well-lived faith already knows God is not a “thing among other things, only bigger”. But more pointed are questions like this: How can there be a self (soul) without the brain to generate the self? How can there be a spirit without a body? Religion, if it asserts a literal spirit realm able to violate physical laws, seems to become incompatible with the fundamental tenet of science. (Thus, when we hear of religious miracles, a scientific position would say that if it really did occur, then someday, science will explain how).
Here, we have a conflict, if we assert that
faith requires the “belief” in the “concept” of spirit. Taken literally, this
turns into an intellectually absurd debate about whether the “spiritual” can
break physical laws. Francis Collins, in his popular book on religion and
science, says “why not?” Maybe it can. I suppose that's possible. But I don’t know that this is a requirement of a life of faith. It may be simply that the
spiritual can do things, and does so through the material universe and through its laws, yet is not itself a physical or material force. It is not present
to us to find parking spaces or even cure our particular problems. The spiritual is about something else entirely.
So then, what is spirit? Spirit is an experience—not a content assertion or a material principal competing with science. Science and spirit are in different realms just as logic and intuition are different ways of knowing, just as forensics and love draw on different spheres of the psyche. Science may “account” for an experience by physical laws, without shedding light on the existential truth that was thereby experienced, just as science may explain why in a mechanical or forensic sense we are moved by great music—without telling us anything about the moral truth revealed through the music. Science can tell us how the material world works, but not why it exists, or why we should care, or what is most important to care about. Science can give us probable facts, but it cannot give us values.
The challenge for science is to recognize the limits of science and the limits of language. The challenge for faith is to recognize the legitimacy of science in the realm of explaining all material phenomena, including the material dimension of our “spiritual” experience. As I already suggested, I doubt that science can account for what we know as God, any more than it can account for the tears we shed before beauty, without reverting to circular arguments (one begins by doubting God and then uses logic to “arrive” at this conclusion, or one decides that beauty is merely subjective, then proceeds to conclude the same). Theology faces the same circularity when it attempts to confirm God’s reality on intellectual grounds (it first assumes God, then proves God).[7]
Put another way, the proverbial philosopher’s stone remains in hiding: Any rationale or intellectual system requires a non-rational starting point. No starting point is certain enough to provide an infallible argument. This state of affairs is likely inevitable, for we know from both psychology and physics that our sensory experiences are incompetent to inform us of objective reality: he who trusts only his own sense perception trusts an unfaithful messenger. We must and do construct our experienced reality, and live by what we perceive.
We face illusion and even contradiction in all directions: when it comes to whether or not to place my ultimate “faith” in reason or in my religious views, logic cannot help me. I must make an existential choice. Everyone must make an existential choice. The paradox and the tension cannot be escaped, rather we make choices into it.
It is illusion to think that one’s total faith in reason and sense to the exclusion of faith in God is not a choice of faith, just as it is illusion to think that one’s faith in God can be proven by reason. It is an illusion to think one can read the Bible literally; literalism is an interpretive stance. It is an illusion to think one can take reality at face value: reality is mediated by our perceptual biases, expectations, and beliefs. Psychology demonstrates all of this.
My choice is already obvious to the reader. For me, there is no contradiction between intellectual honesty, or for that matter science, and the walk of joy and longing that I call my faith and spirituality, and which I practice by conscious choice within the structures of an established religion. There is no more contradiction in this than in being a scientist who is in love, or in being a scientist who is moved by poetry. One does not get into arguments about whether love is touching on something true, or whether poetry is touching on something true, or whether the music in a great symphony expresses something true, but we get into arguments about whether religious faith is touching on something true. Such arguments are absurd, in that they are not “solvable” by logic or argument but only by direct experience, interpreted subjectively.
This argument then is rooted in religion being represented as being about content assertions, rather than being about expressing a lived experience.[8] Do I need religion to live an ethical life? No. Do I need religion to be happy? No. Why then do I practice my faith? For me, my human experience and human experience as I observe it in the world, my identify, who I am, cannot be described or adequately expressed without the language of faith. The language of science and of reason alone doesn’t cut it when it comes to expressing the world of love, nor the world of deepest human aspirations, nor our greatest lamentations and sorrows—nor my experience of spirit, vivid and transformative and joyful.
Not for me. The full range, depth, complexity, and meaning of human experience cannot be addressed by logical systems of thought, nor even by art or poetry. It is only expressed fully when these are combined with religious sentiment and religious apprehension. If I give up my rational thinking ability, I give up an essential element of how I know and learn. If I give up my religious apprehensions and expressions, I give up a fundamental portion of my humanity.
When I add the layer of faith to the layers of
science and art, then life is transformed, as if from black and white to vivid
color. To try to sum up:
Religion cannot tell us how the double helix
parts to form life;
Nor by what chemical transformations the
stars whirl and burn.
Science cannot tell us how to live,
Now why we should bother to go on.
Science can give us options but cannot tell
us which to choose.
For that depends on what we have valued,
And our religion, our faith, tells us what we
have valued.
Philosophy can provide reasons and ethics,
But cannot express the full depths and range
of the heart,
Nor encompass life’s anguished lamentations.
Poetry can express the fullness of the heart,
emotion and magic,
But cannot touch our awe at the ineffable and
call us to life transformed--
Without becoming faith and religion.
None but faith reflects the longing of the
soul
In love with the hidden fire that lights all
that is.
And so we need science, and philosophy, and
poetry,
But likewise without faith and its symbols I
cannot express the full range of my humanity.
Confuse these things and be confused indeed;
Each in its sphere, and life may open before
us.
[1] I am indebted for the entire thought
in this paragraph to Elizabeth Johnson, who articulates this view in her
opening chapter of Search for the Living
God. However, as I recount in subsequent chapters, I arrived at this
understanding long ago in my faith journey by another route.
[2] For an example blog
post, http://greaterthanlapsed.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/cognitive-dissonance-faith-and-lacks-thereof/;
for an experimental study that supports a dissonance model of religious belief
in the face of challenge, see for example: Rational processing or
rationalization? The effect of disconfirming information on a stated religious
belief. D.C. Batson, Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 32(1), Jul 1975, 176-184.
[3] As near as I can ascertain, this term
was coined by American
University communications
professor Matt Nisbet; http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2007/08/19/why-the-new-atheist-attack-mac/
[4] Two well-publicized examples: Richard
Dawkins, The God Delusion (Bantam
Press, 2006); Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not
Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve Hatchet Book
Group, Warner Books, 2007)
[5]
Two much-cited examples: Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief; Free
Press, 2007); Paul Davies, The Goldilocks
Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? (Penguin Press, 2006).
[7] But what
of the eminently practical question of life after death? Here it is not a
matter of reconciling symbol and literal, for either we live after death or we
do not. For now, science concludes that life after death would violate our
known material laws, but cannot disprove life after death. But science is still
in its first days, with a million years to go. Someday, life after death may be
proved by means currently unimaginable to us. People of faith meantime may
“believe in life after death” but at risk of suborning logic; they must
recognize this belief as one that cannot be proven, that may someday by
techniques yet unimagined be tested, and disproven. Yet it functions
nonetheless to bring us a compelling story about why and how to live. For me,
“life after death” is not an important foundation of my faith. My faith is
about encountering God now, not about speculating on things I cannot know. The
Buddha, and the Christ, were less concerned with this question than with urging
men to reform their lives here and now, for the sake of this life.
[8] Karen Armstrong’s Case for God (Knopf; 2009) elegantly
traces this history and makes an interesting argument that we have a uniquely
modern confusion, seen as an historical trend through the centuries, in which
fundamentalism and atheism in their current form arise from the same logical
error.
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