There is an article that appeared on Yahoo! News by Amy Sullivan titled Helping Christians Reconcile God with Science. In it, she says that Francis Collins, best known to some for his role in the Human Genome Project, wishes to establish a relationship between science and religion. To this end, he has "unveiled a new initiative to guide Christians through scientific questions while holding firm to their faith." Now, while there are some people who believe that the two are perfectly compatible, there are those who adamantly disagree with that notion. I am one of those naysayers.
People have tried to reconcile the two, but we see what happens when religious people try to marry religion and science. We get the Templeton Foundation and the Discovery Institute or worse - the crackpot site Answers in Genesis. These groups are not in the business of promoting science. They are in the business of reconciling religion and science by perverting science via intellectual dishonesty so that is no longer distinguishable as science. Science is not something to be reconciled to anything, really. The only reconciliation that is prudent is within science itself - the reconciliation of theories and evidence.
Why should we assume that Francis Collins (or anyone for that matter) is someone to look to to find a reconciliation of science and religion? Collins, who would have us believe that he found God in a frozen waterfall, does nothing more than show us that it is possible for a scientist (or anyone) to cast reason aside, if even momentarily. It's amazing, considering what he has done for the field of science, to see such a turnabout. Some people might see that as having meaning beyond the fact that he has succumbed to fantastical ideas. His "sign" of the divine is no more significant or reliable than those of any number of people who see the face of Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich or the woman who saw the virgin Mary in her MRI scan and subsequently sold said scan on eBay for over $700.
Perhaps the explanation is as simple as something like he has experienced the onset of some mind altering disease of which we are not currently aware. Because he saw a frozen three-part waterfall, he has turned to religion. That he took the waterfall as a proof of the divine doesn't make it so. Perhaps it is nothing more than a sign of the beauty of nature. But, no. Like so many people, he is readily willing to assign some supernatural origin to that which we could see all around us every day if we so chose to see it. Beauty. Is beauty only to be created? Or can it just be?
Truly, if beauty were divinely inspired, it would make sense that all people would see the same beauty in all things that are thought to be beautiful. Yet, that is not the case. Surely divine beauty would not be subjective. But what is true of most people is that we often see what we hope to see in all things. If I wanted to find signs of a divine triune in a pile of dried cow manure that had cracked upon drying into three sections, I am sure that I could. What a repulsive thought.
Richard Dawkins addressed a similar notion in The God Delusion in a section titled The argument from beauty. He said:
I have given up counting the number of times I receive the more or less truculent challenge: "How do you account for Shakespeare, then?" (Substitute Schubert, Michelangelo, etc. to taste.) The argument will be so familiar, I needn't document it further. But the logic behind it is never spelled out, and the more you think about it the more vacuous you realize it to be. Obviously Beethoven's late quartets are sublime. So are Shakespeare's sonnets. They are sublime if God is there and they are sublime if he isn't. They do not prove the existence of God; they prove the existence of Beethoven and of Shakespeare.
So is true of that infamous, worldview altering waterfall of Francis Collins.
Never mind that the notion of a "Holy Trinity" is a man-invented proposition springing from the Council of Nicaea "perfected" in the Nicene Creed. It is no more a divine notion than is the idea that men are superior to women. And it is no more a divine revelation than is the Bible, which was compiled by the same power hungry man who convened the Council. And that Collins is basing his revelation on something that in his mind represented the triune is a load of hog wash - as much rubbish as is the man-made Trinity notion itself. I have to wonder, why did Collins think this waterfall was about the Trinity? Why didn't he liken it to Cerberus and assume he was standing at the gates of Hades? (I wonder if he walked beyond the waterfall and what he found if he did.) One is just as silly a notion as the other. They are equally plausible.
Typically, when people try to reconcile science and religion, I see it as nothing more than a meager attempt to keep their religion superior and science inferior. Their motivation for trying to reconcile the two is not grounded in a desire to prop up science. Not at all. They are motivated by their desire to keep science at bay because they understand the damage that science does to their belief. The more and more we understand about nature, the more religious dogma is ruled out as explanation for anything, whereas in days of old, it was the "explanation" for everything.
In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins said:
Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it. What worries thoughtful theologians such as Bonhoeffer is that gaps shrink as science advances, and God is threatened with eventually having nothing to do and nowhere to hide.
Some have said that cognitive dissonance surely must come into play when considering the reconciliation in one's mind of religion and science. They say that those who think the two can coexist ignore the cognitive dissonance that almost certainly must be happening. But, I think, perhaps for some of them, because science gets perverted and molded by certain religious people, there is no cognitive dissonance at all. Science becomes something other than science in the hands of these people. What they call science, isn't really science at all. Take a good look at intelligent design, for example. Some would (and have) call that bad science. Not me. Calling it bad science gives it the designation of being, albeit bad, science. I rather think of it as a bad attempt at making manure look like science.
Let us not forget that those creationists who came up with the idea of intelligent design did so with an agenda. The agenda, of course, was to elevate religion and demote true science so that humans could maintain their sense of superiority in the universe. The agenda of science, if there be one, is to discover truth - to arrive at explanations for the unknown. How can we possibly reconcile religion and science when one claims to know and the other claims to not know?
In god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens talks about the notion of a reconciliation in Chapter Five - The Metaphysical Claims of Religion are False. He said:
Faith of that sort - the sort that can stand up at least for a while in a confrontation with reason - is now plainly impossible. The early fathers of faith (they made very sure that there would be no mothers) were living in a time of abysmal ignorance and fear.
One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody - not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms - had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs).
All attempts to reconcile faith with science and reason are consigned to failure and ridicule for precisely these reasons.
Of course, in his book, Christopher laid out several examples that lead up to the last quoted sentence above. But I think you get the gist. Things were made up to explain the unknown. The explanations made us feel better. There was no evidence or rational thought behind those explanations. But, as we have advanced technologically, and have been able to provide answers grounded in reality, the myths have been pushed aside. And just because currently we are not technologically advanced enough to explain away all of religious myth, that does not mean that this will always be so.
And certainly, one must recognize that as long as people hold steadfastly to their religious myths, they will never be open-minded enough to look at the world objectively - and that stance is contrary to scientific exploration. In this spirit and in closing, I will refer you again to something Richard Dawkins said in The God Delusion:
What worries scientists is something else. It is an essential part of the scientific enterprise to admit ignorance, even to exult in ignorance as a challenge to future conquests. As my friend Matt Ridley has written, "Most scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that drives them on." Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a different reason: it gives them something to do. More generally... one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.
Comments
I quit talking about Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich when I discovered that there was a much more convincing image of Jesus in a dog's butt.
bitsandpieces1.blogspot.com/2006/09/jesus-image-found-in-dogs-butt.html
Wow. You really are a painful person to read. You have serious issues. I hope you are getting help.
Spot on Trina. You closing quote of Dawkins is so important yet so poorly understood by the layperson.
Hi Trina,
I enjoy reading your articles, even though we probably could not disagree more vehemently on this subject. :) I think you're buying into Dawkins' and Co.'s naivete when it comes to the intersection of science and faith. Collins, Henry Schaefer, Alister McGrath, Ken Miller...the list of brilliant thinkers in the sciences could go on and on, yet Hitchens, Dawkins and others would continue to play ostrich, burying their heads in the sand in order to maintain their mantra that "rational people" can't be religious. Even Gould recognized how silly a position this is--and he was certainly no icon of the religious right!
Would you be interested in doing a joint-published examiner vs. examiner type dialogue sometime on issues like this? Your passion and wit are great and I think we could generate some pretty good readership through a joint debate. If nothing else, it'd be a lot of fun. :)
Blessings,
JMS
Charlotte Methodist Examiner
Well done Trina. It is really about time religion got ridiculed into NON-existence.
Thanks for your post. Here is a website that brings science (not theories) together with the absolute authority - www.icr.org
They have real scientist that have many patents and a nobel piece prize.
I saw a gorilla wearing a long blonde wig in the first waterfall photo (far left). All Praise to Bobo!! ;)
The website you link, the Institute for Creation Research, is a crank organization promoting young Earth creationism and the bible as the inerrant word of God. It's complete and utter bullshit.
How typical, any view contrary to yours is automatically relegated to "crank" or "delusional", "moronic"to name but a few. One thing i'm grateful for that i'm not playing on the same team as you and duckphup. Your own adjectives is the very cap your wear, and as Rod Stwart sang all those years ago *you wear it well*
This article makes the same mistake that Dawkins, Hitchens, the Discovery Institute, and the Intelligent Design advocates all make: they all insist on interpreting religious myth literally. Genesis 1 is myth. This does not mean, as most would think, that it is simply false, in the sense that a scientist means when she says something is false. Religious myth, such as the Genesis creation story, conveys truth (if any) via symbolism. It does not matter if the story is based on some real event, such as the life of Jesus, or involves blatently impossible events, such as Noah's flood. They are stories meant to tell us about our place in the cosmos.
So long as scientists and religious zealots insist on myths being literally true or false, they will make a lot of noise signifying nothing.
Also, there are plenty of religious viewpoints not the slightest at odds with science, such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Read Joseph Campbell, then come back to the table to talk.
"One thing i'm grateful for that i'm not playing on the same team as you"
You aren't, you;re playing on the American retard team, who blindly denies the veracity of science. Sorry to have to clue you in, retard, but the bible is a load of ancient cr_p, the universe is 13.7+ billion years old, the Earth is 4.5+ billion years old, and you are a complete f_cking retard, who gleefully participates in the destruction of your planet and your nation. My suggestion to you, is stay out of hospitals and off of airliners. They use instruments, which can't possibly work according to your crank document nominally knows as the bible, the sh_tty and obsolete word of some idiotic ancient goatherders. You're no better than the f_cking Taliban.
You are the taliban, the American Christian Taliban. Does that make you proud, as_hole?
I'm going to verbally ream your a_ses until the end of freaking time, get used to it, Gomer.
Or is it Goober? Murkan retards, you just gotta love em. According to
"blatantly impossible events, such as Noah's flood."
That's so weird that you mention that, because science tells us these kinds of events are not 'blatantly impossible', but happen all the time, and are guaranteed to happen yet again.
Tell us what science tells you will happen when a cosmic bolide (asteroid or comet) hits the ocean at 20 to 50 thousand klicks. The raining 40 days and 40 nights is going to be the least of your problems. You'll just have to trust science on that, and trust science to tell you what you can do to prevent it from happening, and how you can survive when it does happen.
There is room for myth in the modern world, it's just idiotic stupid religious myths that scientists have real problems with, like the myth that the bible is the inerrant word of 'god', whatever the f__k god happens to be.
Whoa! Tommy Lee is a little hot and bothered it seems. Calm down, fella. You're lumping all kinds of things together and then attacking it all. This is just like when Young Earth Creationists lump all "evolution" together and attack it. It makes your position look reactionary and ill-conceived.
Young Earth Creationism and anti-scientific proponents =/= religion
And Lanny, I have to disagree slightly with your calling Genesis "myth". While it does have much in common with Ancient Near East mythic literature (i.e. Atrahasis, Enuma Elish, etc.), that does not mean it was intended to be taken completely a-historically. As Peter Enns demonstrates quite well, distinguishing completely between "myth" and "fact" is a modern anachronistic way of studying ANE literature.
Is Genesis science? No. Is it symbolic myth only? No. It is Ancient historiography and we should approach it on its own terms before attempting to critique (or embrace) it.
JMS
Charlotte Methodist Ex
"Young Earth Creationism and anti-scientific proponents =/= religion"
And religion does not equal science. Do you understand arithmetic and logic at all, or do you deny that as well. Science and religion are incompatible and we live in the real world.
What's it gonna be in the real world?
Religion or science?
Retard.
Now i'm even more.
Typical demonic response of a so called enlightened thinker,You desperatley need help. Keep it up you just confirm my early statement.
*You wear it well*
"Now i'm even more."
More what? Retarded or religious?
They're equivalent when it comes to solving real problems in the real world, and you've got real problems in the real world, trust me.
Tommy, why so angry? Your issue isn't a logical one, judging by your vitriolic responses, it's an emotional one. If it were rational there'd be no need for using bigoted terms like "retard" when responding to those with whom you disagree.
Rather than making a sound point you're coming across as an angry adolescent. I'm not saying you are such, I'm just saying you're coming across that way.
Perhaps you might take a page out of the late Stephen Gould's book in your dealings with people of faith? It would probably garner much better results.
Thomos,
The story of Noah is in fact a physically impossible event on every level. There is no science that supports this story and plenty that discredits it.
Also, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism are more accurately philosophies not religions. It is possible to tie these philosophies to some modern day physics, but they still have no connection what so ever to science.
You seem very confused in your rantings.
Dan,
You should qualify your statement a bit. There is no evidence for Noah's flood AS INTERPRETED BY A LITERALISTIC MODERNISTIC READING of the text. However, if Gen.6-9 is describing a massive deluge that wiped out nearly all of humanity in ancient Mesopotamia using ANE Literary convention (as I and many others argue it is), then there is quite a bit to commend it.
James,
If you are trying to tell me that the earth could be flooded to a point of human extinction within 40 days then I would love to see the scientific evidence that that is even remotely possible. Our oceans and atmosphere don't hold anything close that amount of water. Where did it come from and where did it go? Let's not mention the impossible task of building a ship that would hold all of earths creatures and if you subscribe to I.D. then you would also have to include all the dinosaurs as well. Please present your evidence.
"The story of Noah is in fact a physically impossible event on every level."
You are a Christian retard :
link : tsun.sscc.ru/hiwg/activity.htm
"There is no science that supports this story and plenty that discredits it."
I just love it when religious retards say there is 'no science' or 'no evidence'. Heckava job.
What are you gonna do, pray the evidence away? Are you claiming that bolides don't strike the ocean? Are you gonna pray that it won't happen?
The flood could possibly be the only thing the bible got right. The story may have gotten a little distorted during the 2000 years of so that it took for writing to be invented, and idiotic religious myths were then recorded.
The craters and chevron dunes are there for all to see, even Pinter's criticism of the 12,900 PB Younger Dryas Clovis Comet impact has been generally refuted, and it's quite possible the crater itself has been identified. Think Tunguska, only much larger, in the ocean.
You think God is save
Dan,
Massive flooding in the Mediterranean basin (as reported by every ANE people group) early in humanity's existence, before they had migrated from the North-Africa-to-Fertile-Crescent would easily do the job. The Biblical text is too sparse to set a specific date or range other than early in human history before humanity had spread outside of the general area of the ANE. While literalistic universal readings of the text are nearly impossible to harmonize with science, the idea of a catastrophic flood such as we find in Gen.6-9 in the Hebrew Bible (note: not necessarily the same as modern English translations) goes well with what we know of human history.
For those who don't think there is a continuity between faith and science:
www.biologos.org/questions
Directed by Francis Collins, not any young earth creationist or Genesis-literalist. Anyone that can successfully direct the international endeavor to map the entire human genome probably knows a little more about the relationship between science and faith than any of us.
To reconcile science and religion requires a person who is honest, open minded and intuitive.
They can be reconciled if you are willing to believe that the human brain has acquired a special ability to preserve its most important information beyond the natural lifetime of the brain. It opens up a range of possibilities that include God, evolution, Intelligent Design, reincarnation and more.
D J Wray
A Total Awareness
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