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| Feature Article – February 2006 |
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Science & Religion 2
Diosproof
The importance of what was said last month about science advancing by DISproof, rather than by proof, and the rigour by which this is enforced, cannot be overemphasised. Since penning that article, we have had two disproofs, in the form of exposés, one of a highly regarded S. Korean geneticist, who was found to have falsely claimed getting stem-cell lines from 11 humans, the other the Dover, Pa, School Board, for what the judge termed “faulty logic”, “breathtaking inanity” and “lying under oath”, in trying to get Creationism accepted into school curricula. In the first instance, the scientist apologised, resigned and will, in effect, “never work again”. In the second, the judge’s ruling simply evoked denial, and the proponents of ‘ID’ are using “Philosophy of Design” as a new Trojan Horse for infecting young minds with pseudo-religious nonsense. The difference between the worlds of science and religion could not be starker. It’s cause for deep shame.
We are so used to accepting truths “by faith”, rather than by disproving falsities, that we sometimes don’t recognise the glibness of how this appears to non-believers, as Lewis Carroll wickedly wrote in Alice in the Looking Glass, where he described the Queen as someone who “could believe six impossible things before breakfast.”
So we are slow to realise that for a scientist, a statement like “the moon is made of cream cheese” is vastly preferable to “God sent his Son into the world to save the world,” because the first is falsifiable – and indeed was shown to be false when Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the stuff on Jul 20, 1969, whereas “God sent his Son” might be true . . might not be . . can’t prove it either way, so it’s only of second-order importance.
This is why – and this is going to hurt – contemporary songs and choruses in church turn so many off. Older hymns are usually expressions of aspiration (O Jesus, I have promised), penitence (Amazing Grace), social action (the hungry fed, the humble lifted high) or praise (O worship the Lord) and so forth. Since everyone aspires, regrets, rights wrongs, or praises, even a non-Christian can recognise sentiments like those, even without wholly sharing them.
But undisprovable statements about Jesus (he answers everyone’s prayers . . Jesus wants me for a sunbeam . . he could have come down from the cross if he’d wanted to, you know) are different. ‘Modern man’ may not be a scientist but we live in a scientific culture that requires statements to be verifiable – or disprovable, same thing – whether they be manufacturers’ or advertisers’ claims, or politicians’ promises. Some aspects of our worship, like the Creed, cannot avoid the label “undisprovable” (Karl Popper's telling word), but if a church service consists almost entirely of one unfalsifiable statement after another, no matter how catchy the ditties they are set to, people start thinking “Emperor’s new clothes” and prefer to tidy their yard on a Sunday morning.
Tot up the number of undisprovable statements you hear in church next Sunday. Prepare to be dismayed.
Evolution
What about Evolution? Just what is it? It has two parts: (1) that all organisms are descended from one form, or a few forms, of life and (2) this has been achieved by the “natural selection of chance variations”. Biologists (and most well-read Christians) were far more quickly convinced about the first part than the second. The evidence for evolution, sketched out by Darwin and much filled in since, is now overwhelming. The living world really is a tree of life whose branches have arisen from a common trunk, which is still branching out (as foretold in Gen 12:2 and 15:5, provided that is not read literally). There are gaps, to be sure, but the old cry “the gaps are where God intervenes!” now causes as much embarrassment to theologians as it does to scientists. The “God of the gaps” is dead.
Chance variations
This aspect of Darwin’s findings is more serious, as ‘chance’ implies there is no purpose, or Providence, in the development of the universe(s) also that all rests on what is called survival of the fittest – that is, that the charming little creatures we see twittering and rustling in the undergrowth are only there because they have hacked their weaker rivals to pieces – “nature red in tooth and claw”, as Tennyson put it. There is still room for wonder in creation. One need look no further than a prairie sunset, or the birth of a baby, or the laws of Physics (my faith has been immeasurably deepened through science), but remember, whatever created that sunset also caused tsunamis, the staphylococcus, the liver fluke and parasites who can only exist by causing excruciating pain to their hosts.
Theologians, not just atheists, have long been troubled by the idea of a Being external to the created universe, interfering and poking about in it arbitrarily, or “in answer to prayers” (whose normal objective is purely to improve one’s own lot). But if there is no reality outside the system and if, as seems likely, “the system”, including space and time itself – there is no “before”, came into being 10 to the minus 43 seconds after a Big Bang 15 billion years ago, then that “system” cannot be personal in any normal sense of the word.
This does not spell disaster for us; it simply means that everything is built-into those first nanoseconds, when hydrogen soup boiled over into the elements and planets as we know them. We must seek happiness on this earth, but sickle cell anæmia also has its rightful place here; tsunamis have to do their thing and earthquakes have to quake. There was no better illustration of that than the Lisbon earthquake on the Sunday morning of Nov 1, 1755, when the collapse of large buildings caused the biggest death toll and 50,000 were killed because they were in churches, worshipping God. As Jesus said about the scaffolding collapse at Siloam (Lk 13:4) “the rain falls on the just and the unjust,” i.e. this is a blindingly neutral universe and our task is to accept that.
If you like, for “thy will be done”, read “take the broader view . . . in spades.”
Of course, that is painful at the personal level. Our average life expectancy may well be 80 or so, but some of us have to go early. Others, good people, will get caught and destroyed by human tragedies not of their making at all. God as the Great Dramatist, causing tragedies as well as happiness and the humdrum, is a good image for us today. Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello has deepened our knowledge of the human condition greatly – but at the expense of Mrs Othello. So, all in all, we can still echo the first Genesis myth: “God is good.”
Popular science/religion writer Paul Davies is a thorough-going Darwinian, but he is able to say “I do believe we live in a bio-friendly universe of a stunningly ingenious character.”
Next month: Life . . . and Soul.