Is Religion Vs Science A Red Herring - Road to the Middle Class

WHILE WE BATTLE in the public square about whether religious belief can coexist with faith in scientific method, some scientists just go ahead and believe in God anyway. In The New York Times Cornelia Dean looks at the books of three scientists who came to faith. For instance,

In “The Language of God,” Dr. Collins, the geneticist who led the American government’s effort to decipher the human genome, describes his own journey from atheism to committed Christianity, a faith he embraced as a young physician.

Of course, Dean also gives us the latest from the religion-and-science-don’t-mix crowd, including Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and Daniel C. Dennett (Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon).

Of course, just as the professors of faith cannot prove (except to themselves) that God exists, the advocates for atheism acknowledge that they cannot prove (not yet, anyway ) that God does not exist. Instead, Drs. Dawkins and Dennett sound two major themes: a) the theory of evolution is correct, and creationism and its cousin, intelligent design, are wrong; and b) a field of research called evolutionary psychology can explain why religious belief seems to be universal among Homo sapiens.

And, as Dean writes, these authors advance their ideas with something like “religious fervor.”

Of course, ever since Kant, we have been in the position where we can’t prove the existence, or non-existence of God. In fact, we can’t even prove the existence of reality. Anyway, they are two different problems.

The problem of reality is the problem of the “is.” How can we know reality, and how reliable is our knowledge? Since Kant we have gradually come to grasp that all we can have is a view of reality that is good until updated.

The problem of God is the problem of the “ought.” What is our purpose; what should we do; what is the meaning of the universe?

To understand the problem of the “ought” we should go to the man who was both a Catholic priest and a top twentieth century physicist: Georges Lemaître. He was the guy who invented the Big Bang Theory of Creation. It is worth reading what John Farrell writes about him.

Back in the early 1930s, the Nobel Laureate Paul Michael Dirac had a chance to discuss the expanding universe with Lemaître. Dirac was an atheist, and yet later he recalled, "When I was talking with Lemaître about this subject and feeling stimulated by the grandeur of the picture that he has given us, I told him that I thought cosmology was the branch of science that lies closest to religion. However Lemaître did not agree with me. After thinking it over he suggested psychology as lying closest to religion."

Now this is a very disturbing idea, and it cuts across the grain of the usual science vs. religion controversy represented by the books discussed by Cornelia Dean.

What is Lemaître saying? I would argue that he is saying that religion and psychology are both about the human soul, what it means to be a human. Science and creation are really secondary issues. The big issue is: how should I live my life? That applies both at the immanent level of how to treat the other people in your life, and at the transcendent level of what’s it all about?

In other words, forget arguing about the “is.” Evolution vs. Intelligent Design is a blind alley. The big questions are about the “ought.” And whether God exists or not, each one of us acts and lives our life based upon some faith, conscious or unconscious, in the meaning and the purpose of life.

Very often we act against our understanding of the meaning and purpose of life. But that is another story.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

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Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

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“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

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Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

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James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
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Drang nach Osten

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Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

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E. G. West, Education and the State

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