Dr. John Young 5/27/07
Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville
Science and Religion
If I said that you were stuck with the scientific wisdom of 2000 years ago, you would think that I was being irrational and irresponsible. Yet, both many proponents and opponents of religion seem to want to require that religious wisdom be stuck in the ancient past, or least in clearly historic and perhaps now outworn traditions, definitions, or understandings. This is equally unreasonable and irresponsible. If either religion or science is going to receive their due, both must be allowed to grow and change to fit current and future needs and evolving understandings and expectations.
Religion appears to be a less reliable source for material facts about the natural world than is the best of scientific wisdom. Science cannot and should not determine our values or choose our aesthetic preferences. In the Western philosophical trinity of the true, the good, and the beautiful, science at its best is a stronger foundation for natural facts or the truths about reality, and religion at its best is a stronger foundation for human goodness and the creation of beauty. There have been many examples of both religion and science being abused or inappropriately applied. Scientists have ideologies and prejudices like other people. Religious history is full of ignorance and bigotry as well as containing examples of outstanding altruism and practical wisdom.
Unitarian Universalists have a clear and relatively unique stance among organized religious denominations in relation to science. We enthusiastically embrace the scientific method as the best human means yet discovered to understand the material truths about the natural world. The fifth of our six faith traditions is: “humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.” Throughout the more than 400 years of our continuing reformation of spirituality, Unitarian Universalists have done their best to base their lives and their faiths upon rationality and have embraced the continuing progress of scientific understanding with its applications to every facet of our lives. We have done our best to nurture our evolving spiritualities on the basis of the amazing reality being uncovered by science.
It is important to remember that our humanist-rationalist-scientific tradition concludes with a warning against idolatries of both the mind and the spirit. We are dedicated to remaining skeptical about scientific truths, religious values, and aesthetic choices. Both scientists and spiritual people can all-too-easily become idolatrous. Both of these wise and vital forms of human wisdom are treasures that can turn into tools of destruction if they are misused.
A 2003 book, The Scientific and the Divine, by James Arieti and Patrick Wilson, two American trained philosophers of science now teaching in England, argues that the various scientific attempts to exclude or undermine religion and the various religious attempts to exclude or undermine science have not worked and should be abandoned. Many of the attempts from each side that tried to mix them together have also not worked because they have required misunderstandings or misapplication of one or the other. They do not find it convincing that religionists could prove a traditional God, a saving Christ, or a militant Islam through the use of science. They also find it faulty to try to use religious dogmas to justify science. Each domain obviously has its usefulness, but it is not practical to try to keep religion and science separate. Most people depend upon science for their largely technological lives and their comprehension of the natural world.
Arieti and Wilson conclude with a modest set of proposals. First, it was a philosophical mistake to think that faith was truth; faith is not truth in the sense that science is truth. Second, cheerfully acknowledge what we do not know and not substitute tales, hopes, or fears as facts. Third, make the best of our situation, seeking lives of rational activity in accordance with virtue, acquiring as much knowledge of the natural world as possible through science, and living as constructive and sustainable lives for humanity on this Earth as possible.
Most people also want to sustain sources of value and a foundation for decisions about beauty and goodness in their lives; they seek a faith; they want a foundational valuing community, a spiritual home with soul-mates, with fulfilling spiritual celebrations and practices. Although science may help us to understand values and may help us to develop better techniques for creating beauty, science cannot decide our values, nor make our aesthetic choices. The 20th century clearly demonstrated that scientists are no better at making value and aesthetic decisions than any other group of people. If God and its purposes are or are reflected by the laws of nature, like the unfolding of evolution, then living in harmony with these laws will fulfill our destiny. Having given us the ability to be rational and scientific, divinity would hope that we would use it to further human fulfillment and the nurture of its Creation.
Last summer my older sister, Nancy Allen, gave me a wonderful book by a Boston Globe science writer and Massachusetts professor named Chet Raymo. The book is called Skeptics and True Believers: Exhilarating Connections between Science and Religion. His central postulate is that “knowledge is a finite island in a sea of inexhaustible mystery. Two corollaries follow: 1. the growth of the island of knowledge does not diminish the sea of mystery’s infinitude, and 2. the growth of the island of knowledge in fact increases the length of the shore along which we encounter mystery.” As Socrates realized eons ago, the more we know the more we realize we do not know. Every serious scientist I have known, and as a UU minister I have gotten intimately acquainted with quite a few, has combined all of their scientific wisdom with a strong and continuing sense of awe and amazement. The Copernican and Darwinian scientific revolutions, which made prior sciences as outmoded as ancient creeds in some ways, have made clear to those paying attention that neither is our Earth at the center of the cosmos nor is our species the only aim of Creation. As Raymo argues, we can now recognize that the world exists in its own right, and we can try to know the world on its own terms.
Like Chet Raymo, Unitarian Universalists are confirmed skeptics. We want to remain open to new knowledge; we want to understand the facts. We celebrate the fact that science has not only increased our knowledge and our ability to live in wise and sustainable ways in this world, but science has deepened our sense of mystery and wonder and strengthened our sense of connections with both the whole of the natural world and all of humanity. Our faiths are not based on ignorance, fear, superstition, or sacrosanct traditions and dogmas that shut us off from either the facts of reality or the wisdom of our personal experiences. Instead, our faiths embrace the magnificent, unfolding complexity of the natural world and the eternities and infinities of the real cosmos.
As Raymo said, the realities of the Red Knot shore bird and our own genetics are far greater than any scriptural miracle or guru’s insight. I read Raymo’s words, and then discovered that the Red Knot, this little shore bird that migrates from the southern tip of South America to the Arctic stops by at Huguenot beach and Fort George Inlet; so, Kathleen and I made a spiritual pilgrimage; we drove out in the early morning a few days ago and saw about 100 of the Red Knots, close enough so that Kathleen got a couple of identifiable photos by shooting our little camera through our binoculars. We, Unitarian Universalists do not depend upon outworn fables or ignorant prejudices in order to have faith in our lives and this world. Instead, we use science to embrace the expanding mysteries and incredible orders of natural Creation, and we use the tools of science to consider all of our experiences and understandings, whether they be facts or scriptures, political and economic ideologies or personal experiences.
Unitarian Universalists seek to identify and practice 21st century spiritualities that fit with the revelations and theories of 21st century science. We are skeptical of both outworn science and religion, both idolatrous scientists and idolatrous spiritual, economic, or political gurus. We seek the facts of natural reality, weigh the theories of scientific experiments and personal experiences, and embrace faiths and practices that further values that nurture justice and love, that sustain the wonders of evolving nature, the progress of human culture, and the sustainability of non-violent activism.
We embrace the realities of nature as portions of the divine. We celebrate the most effective theories of causation, growth, and development as portions of the divine energies at work. We try to understand how we may live our lives in ways that sustain, nurture, and even empower the evolution of natural Creation. Science is our ally and our nature-based, evolutionary, experimental, energy-focused and cooperatively oriented religion is our shared quest. As Albert Einstein said, “Science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind.” Unitarian Universalists are determined to be neither lame nor blind. As we discovered last week, it is possible to learn even about the most elevated spiritual aims, like altruism, through the work of modern scientists. Nature is not some outworn social Darwinian perversion of science. Nature is rife with examples of altruism. However, we also realize that science cannot cause us to live consistently altruistic lives. For that, we need to choose values larger and more enduring than our short-term, selfish interests. Science can reveal a world of incredible beauty and intricacies, but we need to discipline ourselves and empower communities in which the greater good is nurtured and the beautiful is created and sustained. Neither scientific nor religious progress is inevitable. It will depend not only upon our knowledge and our technologies but as much or more upon our values, choices and sacrifices. The best of both science and spirituality will be needed to sustain natural Earthly Creation that perpetuates humankind and empowers the beloved community, or for the theists among us, the kingdom of God.
The sacred space of our natural world as discovered and understood by science is infinite and eternal beyond the wildest dreams of our religious ancestors. It is far more intricately ordered and interdependent than the most complicated of ancient theologies or philosophies. As the island of scientific knowledge grows to mammoth proportions, the shore of spiritual mysteries expands far beyond the fantasies of the ancients. We are evolving and self-conscious portions of star dust and the creative energies themselves. We are the progeny of Creation itself, sparks of light in the eternal and infinite fires of reality.