Before I get to any analysis, however, let me clarify a few things. As to the question: can religion interfere with science, my answer is yes it can and it most likely has. But so have a lot of non-religious – or at least non-proselytizing – people. I’d say that the Visigoths probably had a hand in setting science back a bit and, as have we discussed earlier, so have the Mongols. So, there’s been a lot a bad behavior all around. One thing I readily concede is that religion – as remarkable as it is – cannot insulate anybody from wickedness and stupidity. Whatever religion teaches, people tend to do and think what they want.
The next question might be: so, on balance, has religion helped or hindered science across the globe throughout all history? I have pointed out previously that, at least during the dark ages and subsequent Middle Ages, religion seems to have exerted a positive influence on scientific development. Plus, science and math flourished in Arabic culture at the same time Islam was also vibrant. But, I’m not an historian, and can’t answer the “on balance” question. After all, we’re still pondering the causes of World War I. More likely, this question probably qualifies as topic for a bargument – a passionate debate over a question which has no answer, usually fueled by a few beers (like, who would win in a war between New York and Los Angeles, or which superpower would you rather have, the ability to fly or be invisible). In any event, I think it’s a bit simplistic to say that the evidence is clear that religion always and everywhere shows up being a hindrance to science.
But, on the different question of whether religion must necessarily clash with science, or put a different way, if religion is doing its job, should it be inhibiting science, I happen to have a viewpoint. And I’m also happy to answer the related issue, could science ever discover anything that would definitively diminish the value or importance of religion – that is, does science pose a threat to religion? My answer to all three questions is – no.
Quite by accident I ran across a video clip of part of a conversation among the current and now infamous four horsemen of the apocalypse (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens), and I actually experienced a revelation. In this particular clip, Harris, without apology, admits that he still uses the terms mystical and spiritual to refer to “a range of experience that is rare and that is only talked about without obvious qualms in religious discourse.” He goes on to say that it was a shame that only religion ever took these experiences seriously. And then Hitchens says that, “If one could make one change, and only one, mine would be to distinguish the numinous from the supernatural.”
And, boom, there was the revelation, from that one throwaway line of Hitchens. My thinking on this suddenly fell into place. What I realized is this: I believe in the numinous; I do not believe in the supernatural. In fact, my view is that belief in “the supernatural” is just a crass form of idol worship – another golden calf – and doesn’t qualify as religion at all. The supernatural realm appears to work much the same as our own: it follows the same laws of cause and effect and, like our world, things apparently can be “designed” there. The only difference between the supernatural and the natural world is that one more force exists – a force that, while otherwise outside the natural realm, can be influenced in much the same way that people are influenced, either by buttering somebody up or doing nice things for him. And, it must be added, the intelligent design of the supernaturalists is only “intelligent” because it’s intelligible to us humans.
In other words, God is just one of us, but really, really powerful. That’s not religion; that’s idolatry – taking something that’s familiar and profane, and setting it up as divine. It’s this kind of thinking that might prompt someone like Edmond de Goncourt to say “If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.”
Rudolf Bultmann puts this supernatural thinking in the category of myth rather than religion: “Myth talks about gods as human beings, and about their actions as human actions . . . Myth thus makes the gods (or God) into human beings with superior power, and it does this even when it speaks of God’s omnipotence and omniscience, because it does not distinguish these qualitatively from human power and knowledge but only quantitatively.”
Religion’s job, however, is to smash idols and open us up to the numinous. Indeed, the word religion comes from the Latin religionem, meaning “respect for what is sacred.” Jews observe the Sabbath. Muslims pray five times a day. Hindus practice yoga. Sufis dance. These practices were intended to heighten people’s awareness of the numinous – the presence of the sacred.
For me, the numinous is not just some psychological category. The experience of the holy, or transcendence or – dare we pull out the phrase now – the mysterium tremendum, is the experience of something real. I concede that this for me is an article of faith, but, like Old Marley’s death, “this must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.”
And so you might ask, if that’s religion’s task, why is it so bad at it? Among other reasons, often times the use of supernatural language by religion is an honest yet clumsy attempt to describe the numinous. Transcendence is so elusive that it must be described by metaphor, poetry or analogy. And people forget that they’re using metaphors. Add that difficulty to what else we know about religion from Huston Smith: “Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality.” So, religions often betray their mission. Nevertheless, Smith insists, “If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.”
Quoting Einstein in the blog seems to be in vogue these days, so here I take my turn:
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
This might seem like a tall order, but my view is that the purpose of religion is to expose the delusion of separateness and free us from that prison, both in terms of our fellow humans and the cosmos. Hence, its two primary concerns: compassion for others and a reverence and awe of the sacred. In other words, love of God and neighbor.
If properly understood, religion has nothing to do with filling in the gaps of science. Its purpose, rather, is to put us in touch with reality in a profound way -- and to urge us to overcome divisions among people and see to it that our fellow humans get a decent life. According to Huston Smith, religion “calls the soul to the highest adventure it can undertake, a proposed journey across the jungles, peaks, and deserts of the human spirit. The call is to confront reality.”
Sin abounds, of course, and religion will always be forgetting its way and will start gap-filling, and we will have to cajole or prod it back. But in this period of late-capitalism, when the cultural tide sweeps us toward endless material acquisition, an increasing sense of self-entitlement and contempt for the outsider; when wars and unimaginable cruelty persist; and great wealth exists beside crushing poverty, religion's radical suggestion that “[if I] have not love, I am nothing,” may be the most urgently needed message of all.
