Is Science Religious?

If the struggle between religion and science for the amorphous prize of truth had a flashpoint, it might have been 1633, when Galileo revealed the results of his observations supporting the Copernican theory that Earth and the other planets move around the sun. Nowadays, amid countless words written about the still testy relationship between the two institutions, a refrain can be found that perhaps does not enjoy the prominence it deserves. This is the contention that science is actually among the most religious of pursuits. Dictionary definitions of religion refer to a quest for the values of the "ideal" life, and the world view that motivates this quest. Those definitions don't attempt to assay the emotions that accompany such a journey, but similar feelings of euphoria and awe have been described by high-level practitioners of both religion and science. When these feelings derive from scientific inquiry, can they fairly be called religious? They certainly involve a world view and the sense of something infinitely complex at work. But does that make science a religious pursuit? Clues to the answer may lie in the past. The first profession, according to anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, was that of wizard or witch.1 The pseudoscience of magic was a specialist's job, whereas the only specialization in early religion, that of spirtualistic medium, was a personal gift rather than a profession. Magic was a practical effort in the realm of the sacred to produce good and ward off evil. Early religion was a body of self-contained acts that, in themselves, fulfilled their purpose by establishing and enhancing attitudes that were valuable to survival of the species. Unlike magic, early religion dealt with irremediable happenings. The first attempts to describe and explain the phenomena of nature in religious terms arose from the traditions of myth. And myth, as James G. Frazer established in his seminal work, The Golden Bough, was characterized by anthropomorphism.2 The gods resembled humans, and the kings of this world were godlike. With survival largely dependent on the fruits of the earth, worship of the cycles of nature and of plants predominated, particularly worship of the largest plant, the tree. The demigod kings were like great trees to their subjects, representing and protecting plenitude. But when the kings grew old, they had to be sacrificed, replaced by others in the prime of life, resurrected, if you will, a passage of seasons, new growth. Abstraction Emerges Through the generations, religion has become increasingly ruled by ideals of benevolence rather than fear of nonsurvival. Its deities have become less humanlike, more abstract, their powers more incomprehensible. In First Principles, Herbert Spencer noted that each "higher" creed throughout history has made further approaches toward complete recognition of the mysteries of existence. Glorifying these mysteries, not explaining them, is the ultimate goal of religion.3 Herein lies its essential difference from science. Unlike magic or religion, science does not deal in the sacred. It concerns itself with the profane realm of that which is knowable, while religion dwells on that which is unknowable. Spencer pointed out that the two institutions have honed each other as they have developed, undergoing a slow differentiation. Spencer called them the positive and negative poles of thought, always adding to the power not only of themselves but of their opposite. Their conflicts have occurred whenever religion has been irreligious, or science unscientific. Nowadays, this happens primarily in two broad regions claimed by both kingdoms: the mind-body problem and creationism vs. evolution. There is much contemporary argument about whether the two institutions can ever reach conciliation in these areas, but if it is possible, an acceptance of their common emotional substrate could be helpful. Albert Einstein wrote about what he called a "cosmic" religious feeling that transcends both fear and benevolence, an emotion familiar to all great religious leaders. "Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole."4 Such a view might equally be ascribed to Buddha or Spinoza, to Christ or Newton. But if this experience is not to interfere in the work of science, it cannot be anthropomorphized, Einstein argued. A God that does not intervene in the laws of physics is not a threat to science. Such a deity would no more create the world in seven Earth days (or several thousand years) than pull the sun across the sky behind a chariot. Ruling over the immeasurable province of that which will remain forever unknown, such a God would not invade the domain of the knowable, where science reigns. Graphic: Cathleen Heard Cartesian Dualism Despite the quaintness to modern readers of many ideas espoused in the 17th century by Rene Descartes, the dualism he propounded still resonates. Matter, including the human body, occupies space but is unthinking, while mind thinks but doesn't occupy space. This expulsion of purposefulness from the material universe provided the philosophical basis for modern physics, the explanation of nature without reference to purposes or "final causes" that had been considered indispensable since Aristotle's day. Descartes' theory also held out hope for the religious realm, by affirming that the mind or soul is a different substance from the body, and thus is not destroyed by corporeal extinction. He was the first philosopher to assert that humankind could content itself with attempts to understand tangible phenomena, and leave the other "truth," what Immanuel Kant later called the noumenon, to God.5,6 Descartes placed the seat of the soul in "a certain extremely small gland" in the brain, the pineal gland.7 But the more abstract theories of modern science surpass that notion for sheer philosophical mystery. To conceive of human consciousness as an emergent property that only manifests when a physical system reaches a level of complexity is, pardon the pun, mind boggling. In Consilience, Edward O. Wilson writes that this modern view portrays consciousness as a virtual reality, and mind as "a self-organizing republic of scenarios" brought about by interlacing patterns of neural activity. There is no locus of mind, and consciousness is not monitored by anything within the brain, no ghost in the machine. Wilson cites the biologist S.J. Singer: "I link, therefore I am."8 The question of where this leaves humans in the scheme of things approaches the other major battleground between the scientific and religious realms. "Could Holy Writ be just the first literate attempt to explain the universe and make ourselves significant within it?" Wilson asks. "Perhaps science is a continuation on new and better-tested ground to attain the same end. If so, then in that sense science is religion liberated and writ large." The Kansas board of education's vote in August to eliminate evolution, cosmology, and some sciences relating to Earth's origin from statewide teaching standards was just the latest incursion into the contested zone of explaining how the world and its creatures came to be. Interestingly, Charles Darwin himself, while recognizing that some naturalists would take strong issue with The Origin of Species, at the same time saw no reason why his theory should shock the religious feelings of anyone.9 This is sensible, because even scientists can logically make the philosophical or theological choice of faith in questions where evidence can never be applied. It could hardly be more clear that evolution is not one of those questions. Unfortunately, the Kansas situation expanded the debate beyond evolution into challenging other theories of origins, including the Big Bang. Science and Mystery Whether religion is necessary to ethics is a subject too broad for this essay, but the protectors of religion should bear in mind that science is moving toward abstractions that highlight mysteries insoluble by rationality. Just as questions of infinity and ultimate causation are beyond human conception, a Theory of Everything would pertain only to the realm of the knowable. As the laws of nature that underlie the warp and weft of the cosmos are increasingly revealed, the belief of scientists in the rationality of these laws is continually justified, and their reaction is an awe recognizable to the religious. Paul Davies summed up the situation beautifully: "We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that give rise to it." Humans wonder at this symmetry. "It's almost uncanny: it seems like a conspiracy."10 Both science and religion exist in the material world, dependent upon extensive infrastructures of money, politics, and power. At times, the higher ideals of these callings are subverted by ambition and greed within their elite castes. Both institutions have much to protect, and yet an acceptance that neither can ever destroy the other, because their proper areas of influence are impregnable to the ideas of the other, might help to reduce their mutual scorn and fear. That, and recognition of the transcendent experiences engendered by both pursuits. But even if it were agreed that science inspires religious feelings, would that make it a religion? What about the slow differentiation over the centuries between the two? Literally, science can never be religion, because it has no faith, which is belief without evidence. Science will always be a secular pursuit, replacing dogma with theories that enable falsifiable predictions. Any questions that cannot be subjected to these tools are not scientific. For example, to ask whether there is a God, or what preceded the origins of tangible phenomena, is unhelpful to the investigations of science. Yet such questions are deeply important to many people. In that respect, religion, like art, will always illuminate the revelations of science. Steve Bunk (sbunk@uswest.net) is a contributing editor for The Scientist. References 1. B. Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion, Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press Publishers, reprint, 1984 (first published, 1948). 2. J.G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, New York, Random House, reprint, 1981 (first published, 1890). 3. H. Spencer, First Principles, New York, D. Appleton and Co., sixth edition, 1910 (first published, 1864). 4. A. Einstein, "Religion and science," New York Times Magazine, Nov. 9, 1930, pg. 1, in C. Seelia, ed., Ideas and Opinions by Albert Einstein, New York, Crown Publishers, seventh edition, 1963. 5. G. Dicker, Descartes: An Analytical and Historical Introduction, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993. 6. H.G. Frankfurt, Demons, Dreamers and Madmen, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1970. 7. R. Descartes, trans. by Stephen Voss, The Passions of the Soul, Indianapolis, Hockett Publishing Co., 1989 (first published, 1649). 8. E.O. Wilson, Consilience, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. 9. C. Darwin, The Origin of Species, New York, Random House, 1979 (first published, 1859). 10. P. Davies, Are We Alone?, London, HarperCollins, 1995.

Is Science Religious?

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