One of the things I most appreciate about Oakhurst is that it is, as Nancy Ammerman told me many years ago, a church where you don't have to park your brain outside before you come inside. That means, for example, that it is a place where one can have intelligent conversations about science and religion.
My first real involvement with the study of science and religion came in a course I took as an undergraduate entitled "Science and Religion" taught jointly by a professor in Chemistry and a professor in the Department of Religion. One of our assignments was to do a book report, and I did mine on a book written by a physicist, entitled something like God and Providence. The thesis of this book was that because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states that one cannot know exactly both the position and momentum of an elementary particle at the same time, there was room for God to act in the world. How brilliant! Because of this quantum mechanical loophole, there was room for both God and science. I wrote a very negative review of this book, basically believing that trying to fit God in between cracks was not the way to reconcile science and religion, and was feeling pretty good about my report, until right before I turned it in, I found a published review of the book written by one of the course professors (the religion professor) greatly praising the book.
I passed the course anyway, but the big question remains: how does one reconcile science and religion?
One of the most famous examples of this conflict is the situation Galileo faced. He did experiments that convinced him the views of Copernicus were correct, that the sun did not revolve around the earth, but that the earth revolved around the sun. This was considered a heretical view by the Inquisition, but he was told by Pope Urban VIII that he could publish his book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems as long as he "taught the controversy," giving arguments for both sides, and not favoring one side. In the book, the geocentric views were espoused by a character called Simplicius, who was often caught in his own errors and many times made to appear a fool. The pope did not like this (particularly since the views of the Pope were uttered by Simplicius), and Galileo was held in detention for the rest of his life. However, no matter how many religious pronouncements there were, none were ever actually able to make the sun revolve around the earth, which the church finally admitted. It is important to realize that the Pope did not understand the science behind Galileo's conclusions; he was opposed merely because Galileo's ideas were counter to those of the church.
We see something eerily similar today concerning human origins from people who believe the Bible is literally true and can serve as a science textbook. There is a new Creation Science Museum in Kentucky that among other things shows dinosaurs roaming the earth at the same time as humans. I think there are probably not many people who believe in a young earth that is only several thousand years old, simply because to do so requires rejecting much of modern science in physics, chemistry, and geology, as well as biology. However, there are many fundamentalist Christians who dispute evolution (and it is mainly Christians). I have read many letters to the editor of AJC from these people confidently stating that "evolution is only a theory," "evolution is not true," "one should teach the controversy," etc. There are many parallels with Galileo: the people who make these statements, like Pope Urban, are ignorant: they are not able to understand the science; they oppose evolution purely because it appears to contradict their religious beliefs. They talk about scientific controversy, where there is in fact none. However, for them I would say that evolution, like global warming, is an inconvenient truth. No matter how many stickers they print, how many laws they pass, how many Education Boards are taken over, or how many Letters to the Editor they write, the scientific facts are not changed.
How then can one reconcile religion and science? Here, Marcus Borg, many of whose books we have studied in the Patchwork Class, has been of enormous value for me. The conflict between science and religion has really come about because of Modernity, the cultural mind-set that began with the Enlightenment of the 17th century. Modernity is characterized by scientific ways of knowing and has led us to be preoccupied with factuality—with scientifically verifiable and historically reliable facts. Borg says that "modern Western culture is the only culture in human history that has identified truth with factuality. We are "fact fundamentalists": if a statement isn't scientifically or historically factual, it isn't true."(1)
Borg rightly states that "Within the church, both biblical fundamentalists and Christian liberals are often fact fundamentalists. For the former, the Bible must be factually true in order to be true at all (hence they emphasize the literal and historical factuality of biblical texts [and therefore oppose Evolution, for example]). Christian liberals have tended to follow a different strategy, seeking to rescue a few facts from the fire. But fundamentalists and liberals alike have agreed: facts are what matter."(1)
Borg continues: as a result of this, "Christianity in the modern period became preoccupied with the dynamic of believing or not believing. For many people, believing "iffy" claims to be true became the central meaning of Christian faith. It is an odd notion—as if what God most wants from us is believing highly problematic statements to be factually true. And if one can't believe them, then one doesn't have faith and isn't a Christian."(1)
Borg postulates an emerging paradigm which "sees the Christian life as a life of relationship and transformation. Being Christian is not about meeting requirements for a future reward in an afterlife, and not very much about believing. Rather, the Christian life is about a relationship with God that transforms life in the present. I think this is worth repeating: the Christian life is about a relationship with God that transforms life in the present. To be Christian does not mean believing in Christianity, but rather having a relationship with God lived within the Christian tradition as a metaphor and sacrament of the sacred."(2)
In this paradigm, there is no conflict between science and religion, because they speak about, and to, different parts of our lives. Whether the sun revolves around the earth or the earth revolves around the sun has no effect on our relationship with God and how we should live our lives as Christians.
1 Marcus J. Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, Harper, San Francisco 2001.
2 Marcus J. Borg, The Heart of Christianity, Harper, San Francisco, 2003.