Science and Religion: An Unbridgeable Divide?

By Sujit S. Datta, Triangle online eMag Editor-in-Chief

There is a lot of talk nowadays about the ‘dialogue’ between science and theology. There are innumerable foundations and centers out there promoting such seemingly idealistic intentions as the “creative mutual interaction between contemporary theology and the natural sciences”, working for a “dynamic and positive relationship between religion and science”, or other such objectives. Do these people actually believe that constructive dialogue between science and religion is possible, or is this simply a case of idealism taken too far?

The presupposition that science and religion can be reconciled is not uncommon, and has actually become taken for granted by many schools of thought. People have learned to live with science and religion, either by dismissing away the apparent contradictions between the two by treating them as ‘non-overlapping magisteria’, or more frequently, by not concerning themselves with this issue at all. However, at the risk of stirring up an age-old debate, I feel we must pose the question – are science and religion really as compatible as many take them to be; and if not, does their division pose a problem that can be bridged? To quote Albert Einstein, does there truly exist an insuperable contradiction between religion and science?

Aristotle tells us that “all human beings, by nature, desire to know”. But what is knowledge? What is truth? How do we arrive at truth? Questions like these have troubled and motivated scientists, philosophers, and theologians throughout history. There is no doubt that science and religion are both motivated by the same desire to understand the true nature of things. The conflict between science and religion, if there is one, is not between their goals, but rather between the ways they set about fulfilling them.

There appear to be four sides in this debate – those who view science as being the only way to reach truth and religion being nothing but unfounded and blind faith; those who side by the integrity of religion; those who believe that science and religion can somehow be reconciled; and those who are just plain confused. To reach anywhere in this debate, we will first have to see how each side presents itself.

Science – too restricted?
There is too much pseudoscience floating out there. Quite commonly, one finds books written about spiritual themes that purport to be ‘scientific’, but in all actuality simply use scientific terminology to appear more authentic. It is not easy to present the criticisms of science put forward by the religion camp, largely because these tend to be couched in flowery, prosaic language, and often don’t make much sense. That the advocates of religion over science cannot sufficiently expound on the points they wish to attack does not mean to say that science does not have its failings – far from it.

It seems to me that the main criticisms of science as a means of seeking the truth can be divided into the following: the reductionist criticism, the problem of science as a social construct, and the criticism of absolute, objective truth.

The word ‘reductionist’ is constantly being thrown out by the critics of science as one of its failings. But what exactly is scientific reductionism? There are different forms of reductionism inherent in scientific methodology. The fundamental belief in an ordered world was essential to the rise of modern science. If our ancestors had thrown up their hands in surrender when faced with a seemingly inexplicable world, resorting instead to explaining away their ignorance by constructing a totally random (and hence incomprehensible) world controlled by the whims and desires of gods and divine beings, then we would be nowhere as near advanced in our understanding of the world as we are today. The presupposition that the world can be understood - when taken in this respect - is undoubtedly a good thing.

However, this assumption has its limits, and we should be wary of explaining away too much with too little – ‘greedy reductionism’, as termed by the Tufts philosopher Daniel Dennett. This happens, for example, when we attempt to explain the workings of a system simply by explaining the sum of its components alone, and ignore any phenomena that may emerge from the workings of the system. It is very easy to understand a system by deconstructing it into its parts, understanding how they in turn work, and then simply equating the two together. For example, if I throw a ball to someone else in a baseball game, our actions can be described in terms of human physiology, and on a more microscopic level, by the principles of physics and biochemistry. It can be said that the baseball game is nothing more than the interplay of several organic molecules, atoms and electrons, and whatnot. This statement is quite right, on a very simplistic level. But does it really increase our understanding of the baseball game? And in addition, if by similar means other processes could be explained in terms of the same physical and biological laws, could we not equate the World Series and the Tour de France? It is very easy to confuse a phenomenon and an explanation. The purpose of science is to best explain the physical world, but this form of ‘greedy reductionism’ – the ease of confusing an explanation with true reality - is indeed a valid criticism of science. We are forced to give up science as being a way of reaching truth, and instead have to accept it as being a means of explaining the way true reality works.

Another form of this reductionism is suggested in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, from his Republic. The thought-experiment posed is basically this: suppose you are a chained prisoner in a dark cave, with other prisoners who you cannot see. You cannot even see yourself. Behind you is a lit fire, which casts your shadows on the wall facing you. For you, all of reality would be the cave, the sounds you and the other prisoners utter, and the shadows cast on the wall of the cave – for you would perceive yourself and the others as mere shadows and sounds, nothing more. Your reality would follow different laws. Now suppose you are a bacterium in a Petri dish, placed in a dark closet. To you, all of reality is your Petri dish. To you, reality works in different ways yet again.

Quite simply, what Plato is questioning in this parable is the nature of reality. Imagine that humans somehow discover a ‘Theory of Everything’ – a set of laws that somehow explains our physical world to more than enough degrees of precision. Quite understandably, we would assume that we had explained all of reality and truth. But what if we as a society are but a small colony of bacteria in a Petri dish, or a chained prisoner in a cave? What if there is another grander reality out there that we have virtually no way of understanding or even conceiving of, of which we are simply a tiny part? Would our so-called ‘Theory of Everything’ be able to explain even a tiny percentage of the true nature of things? I think not. It is this form of reductionism - the desire to reduce all of reality to elegant ‘fundamental laws’ that are omnipotent and all-encompassing - that convinces scientific fundamentalists that theirs is the only truth.

Foucault and Nietzsche, Marx and Mannheim, while espousing different theories of the exact causes of belief, all agreed on an explanation of the general framework of scientific belief as a social construct. What they suggested was the now widely-held notion that science and the direction of scientific research are heavily subject to socioeconomic forces – similar to other ideologies, as religious and political leanings, or what Marx referred to as ‘forms of consciousness’ (simply put, anything that has to do with ideas).

Throughout history, scientific research has always been subject to economic and political forces. As a result, there has always been a deep-seated division between theory and practicality in the sciences. This arises from the fact that scientific research costs money, the majority of which comes from funding by corporations or organizations with vested interests in the research being performed. The only research that corporations would actually find interesting – and hence, want to fund – is research of a more practical nature; and only research that ties in with the socioeconomic and political interests of the time, at that. Thus, it can easily be seen why this framework has led to a rift between the theoretical sciences and the practical sciences, with the theoretical sciences being heavily under funded – a shame, considering the new and groundbreaking insights that have been a result of them, which have subsequently been applied by practical science into things that are useful - or more often, things that are pretty and appealing to the masses. We like seeing magnificent shows with plenty of light and action, not a scientist scribbling away in his notebook. In this ‘modern’ society of ours, science has been reduced to nothing more than a performing monkey.

And now we come to the argument against absolute, objective truth. As I mentioned before, science and the scientific method is based on the notion that this world of ours is a structured and ordered, inherently knowable world – and in addition, that the same universal laws govern everything. This idea has been around since the time of Newton and his Principia, in which he presented his universal law of gravitation – ‘universal’ meaning that the same laws of gravitation governed the largest heavenly bodies as they did the smallest particles. Ever since then, the notion of a universal ‘theory of everything’ has more or less become ingrained in our collective scientific consciousness. When discussing reductionism in science, I suggested that perhaps a ‘theory of everything’ would possibly not truly explain everything, but simply everything that we know of. Let us go back one more step – maybe there isn’t even a ‘theory of everything’ for our present reality. What if the reality we know of cannot be explained by universal laws? What if our most fundamental assumption, that the world is knowable, is really just a lie? What if, spurred on by our successes at explaining so much of the world that we know, we have become too headstrong and prematurely jumped to the conclusion that it is possible to understand everything?

These questions deal with the ‘absolute truth’ assumption of science. But what about the assumption that scientific truths must be objective? A fundamental assumption of the scientific method is that for us to reach truth, we must be purely objective. This idea does indeed make a lot of sense. However, it also discounts the notion of there being a subjective truth What if truth is not the same for everyone – that perhaps a law may be true for you, and the world that you perceive, but is false for me, and my own little world? Yes, abiding by objectivity allows us to come up with reproducible results. But taken too far, objectivity also discounts the possibility of truth being an individual thing, for it is easy for us to become headstrong and arrogant by our successes through the scientific method and take it to be the one sole way of understanding the world. In fact, science by its nature must be subjective, for it is performed by scientists – humans – not disinterested automata. So why do we still try to put up this show of science being purely objective; and perhaps more importantly, why must we have a purely objective science?

Religion under fire
It is not hard to understand the rationalistic position on religion. One of the first accepted descriptions of scientific reasoning and logic was given by Aristotle in his Organon, and since then, we have come to accept the general description of science as being the use of structured principles of logic, methodology and rationality to understand the true nature of things – the ‘scientific method’, as it is known. The scientific method has undergone extensive modification, scrutiny, and ultimately, acceptation, and it is virtually unknown to hear of someone question its veracity in these times. No one doubts the results of science, mainly because science produces reproducible and verifiable results.

It is not enough in science to accept the word of someone else; all scientific theories are peer-reviewed, and can be tested over and over again to one’s heart’s content – the results will always be the same. The underlying assumption is that, if someone performs an experiment halfway around the world from me, then given the same experimental conditions, I should be able to replicate their results. We see the results of this all around us – the planes we use to fly across the world in a mere day, the computers whose indescribable power we readily have at our fingertips, even the lights we unthinkingly switch on at the beginning of every new day – these are all the products of scientific principles. The acceptability of science stems largely in part from its practicality and usefulness.

Does religion have a similar practicality, or structural framework of methodological skepticism? No. The critics of religion do have a point when they portray religion as being based on blind faith, anecdotal evidence, and unquestioning trust in authority. When presented in this way, it is not hard to see how strong science stands and how shaky the foundations of religion are.

Ancient peoples believed in different gods and goddesses, different structures of the universe, and different laws that governed the world (or perhaps believed in the non-existence of laws in a purely chaotic world). They prayed to Zeus or Ra, Thor or Quetzalcoatl, or perhaps, to an “Earth Mother”. As far as they were concerned, these gods controlled all of creation, and could be pleased or displeased. If the gods could be pleased by performing certain rituals, or by simply following certain rules of ethics and morality, then things would go well. If the gods were displeased, then life would be very harsh, and humans would have to make up for their failings. These rituals and codes of ethics were often intertwined, and developed through the generations into formalized religions, whose authorities could not be doubted in the least. They passed down stories of the gods and goddesses, and of great people who achieved divine status because of their actions. In these so-called modern times, we study these rituals, ceremonies and beliefs, read about these gods and goddesses, and often find them and their exploits laughable and amusing. It is not uncommon to ridicule ancient peoples and their beliefs – beliefs that we now know to be wrong, through none other than science. But why do we not go that extra step and ridicule the processes that gave rise to these beliefs? After all, if the beliefs that ancient peoples held about life, the universe, and everything else were wrong, then surely the methodology (or lack of it) that produced such beliefs is somehow flawed as well?

Scientific research in fields such as paranormal psychology is increasingly debunking religious myths and questioning the ‘divine’ nature of many religious experiences. Cognitive research in the neural basis of religious expression has turned up many interesting findings, such as the effects of the brain’s temporal lobe – quickly dubbed the ‘god module’ – which, upon excitation in certain patients, results in the subject responding more intensely to religious beliefs or having frequent ‘mystical’ experiences, similar to those of innumerable ‘holy’ men. Spiritual fervor is increasingly becoming nothing more than a model for psychiatric delusion. This begs the question, where does psychosis end and religious belief begin?

It seems to me that it is too convenient to explain things away by resorting to a god (or gods), or divine being of some sort. As the famous science fiction writer Robert Heinlein puts it, religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help. True, there are a lot of questions that are not answered by science, questions that cannot be answered by the scientific method. Not all things can be quantified, and not all relationships can be empirically established. There is a whole realm of existence and experience that science simply does not treat. I must also admit that there are many questions out there that science has not yet answered, simply because scientists have not arrived at an answer. We don’t understand everything out there. This is not a failing of science. It is unfortunate, then, that there are far too many people out there who see this as a valid criticism of science – who look to unexplained phenomena as proof that ‘something else’ exists out there that somehow defies scientific understanding.

The common misconception is that since the spiritual or supernatural realm is the only sphere of thought that purports to answer these questions, it must be correct. People turn to theology or the supernatural for answers to the questions that science cannot, or has not, answered. Religion exists in modern society to make up for science’s failings, not to dedicate itself to the search for truth, and the problem with this tendency to look for answers in the supernatural or spiritual realm is that they are so easy to find – just not the right ones. To quote Heinlein once again, the nice thing about citing god as an authority is that you can prove anything you set out to prove.

Life, the Universe, and Everything…
It is clear that there are flaws in our current system of thought. Science and religion both purport to be means of gaining insights into the true nature of reality and the physical world, or at least understanding how true reality works.

Science has generated breathtaking results and insights, but is still built on assumptions that may not always be applicable in understanding the true nature of things. The problem with science is that it has become too confident of its success – perhaps rightfully so – and must reassess the assumptions and premises it is based on. Science is a spiritual quest – scientists do what they do because they are fascinated by the world around them. Why do we restrict ourselves? Perhaps we should come up with a new methodology and framework to treat the realms of the world that we have previously ignored. We must be open-minded enough to pursue this undertaking wherever it may lead us; we must be bold enough to attempt to apply what the structured methodology of the scientific method has taught us to more uncommon modes of thought.

Spirituality, in sharp contrast, has not gotten us anywhere. It is still based on shaky foundations of blind faith, and unquestioning belief in authority. Religion does include a more subjective aspect that teaches us how to live our lives and how to interpret the world around us. But without a willingness to accept rationality and build a sound methodology, religion will continue to be nothing more than something that exists to make us feel good about ourselves, the ‘crutch’ that we turn to when all else fails. Either religion can continue providing the emotional support that it does to innumerable followers and stop pretending that it answers any questions that deal with the true nature of reality; or, religion must be willing to adopt a more structured, coherent and logical worldview and work hand in hand with science to explore the realms of the unknown.

We live in interesting times. Science and religion both play enormous roles in our lives; and yet, we are largely uninterested by them and what they stand for. The successes of science have made us more complacent about it, and reluctant to expand its boundaries any further; while on the other hand, religion has still clung on to archaic beliefs in authority and has largely shunned rationality and methodology. We have largely ceased to concern ourselves with the relationship between the two and have instead chosen to relegate them to different areas of life. This must change. We should be more open to having discourse between the two, for there is no doubt that both science and religion can learn much from each other. We must do this now, to prevent both spheres of thought from becoming stagnant and set in their ways. Is this too much to ask – ‘unfounded idealism’, as I termed it at the beginning of this article? I hope not, for the sake of both science and religion.