In the Book of Job, God tests Job's faith by sending him great troubles: a disabling and disfiguring illness, loss of riches, and loss of his beloved children. Job cries out to God, "Why?" He doesn't lose his faith exactly, but questions God's mercy and justice. God finally answers Job, telling him in effect that he, a mere man, is arrogant for asking such questions.
The text reads: Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. 'Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements-surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?'" Job (38:1-7)
God continues with a longer answer in that vein, declaring His creative power. Job finally answers humbly, "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.... I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know." (Job 42:1)
Paul Davies, the physicist wrote: To invoke God as a blanket explanation of the unexplained is to make God the friend of ignorance. If God is to be found, it must surely be through what we discover about the world, not what we fail to discover.
Mary Oliver, the poet wrote: When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When I was in college, I stayed up late one night trying to write an overly ambitious paper. I've forgotten now which class this was for or even what academic discipline. In this paper I tried to refute the belief in a Christian miracle from a modern scientific perspective... namely the Resurrection of Jesus. I clearly stated that I thought it was a scientific impossibility for a human body to rise from the dead and that the belief was bunk. But about at 3 a.m. in the morning, I came to the sudden realization that for devotedly religious folks, scientific proof was irrelevant. It was a matter of faith to them, based on the teachings of the church authorities, and nothing I could say would change that fact. I quit and went to bed exhausted. That morning, I told my professor that I couldn't complete the paper. She, with an understanding smile, gave me an extension and I wrote a paper on another topic. That was my first inkling of the problems that were involved in the dialogue between science and religion.
This tension of the skeptic and the believer resides within me! I come from a family of scientists. And I haven't, since early childhood, believed in miracles. Yet I have never lost my sense of wonder and amazement at the world. And the questions raised by Job and others persist: Is God (or the Universe) benevolent, favoring human beings? Or is it morally neutral? Where did we come from? Where do we fit in? And what is our purpose or meaning? All these are profoundly religious questions. Even those who don't believe in miracles must grapple with them.
This is quite a huge subject really, science and religion, about which much is written. And its subject that has fascinated me for years. I could go on too long time about this, but I'll talk this morning about how science and religion, rather than being in opposition, need each other. It is often said that faith without science is blind and science without faith is deaf. Together they can bring understanding and create true wisdom.
I found a wonderful and insightful discussion in Steven Jay Gould's book, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. Gould gives us a broad view of how these two approaches have met, fought, and made up throughout history.
Let's go back a few centuries to the time of the Renaissance, when an age of reason and scientific inquiry began. We know that science and religion didn't have a happy relationship from the beginning. Most people know about how Galileo Galilea was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church (as Barry told us this morning). Part of the problem was the Galileo challenged the absolute authority of the Pope Pius XII. Not only did the Pope at that time have religious authority, but real secular power. And generally, as Gould pointed out, institutions in power don't give turf up easily.
In more recent history, we know about the long struggle between the religious fundamentalists in our country who take the bible literally and the scientific world that accepts Darwin's Theory of Evolution. This struggle began when Darwin published Origin of the Species in 1859. And it heated up in this country with the Scopes Monkey trial in 1920. Did you know that among the Western countries, it's only in America that the controversy over Darwin persists?
It was from cases like these that many folks have the impression that religion and science are basically at odds. However, as Unitarian Universalists we are aware that all religions are not alike...and that liberal religion in general is open to the findings of science. One of the sources of our liberal faith is listed on this pocket card: "Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance or reason and the results of science, and [which] warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit."
It does not challenge our sense of wonder at the universe, nor our belief that there is a basic moral code to guide how we live our lives to know that we are related to the great apes. And I am only touched when I look into the face of a chimpanzee. I see there a human-like expression and know that we are so closely related by way of a common primate ancestor, lost in the dim midst of time. Furthermore, I feel protective of the precious jungle environment from whence this chimpanzee or its parents came, knowing that it is endangered by our human carelessness.
Science is not the enemy of religion. To question how the universe works is not blasphemy. As the physicist said, "If God is to be found, it must surely be through what we discover about the world, not what we fail to discover." Yet there are two modern approaches to this whole issue of religion and science... even for those who have faith in the findings of science. How are the two very different fields to inform each other?
There is what I call the more humanist or agnostic view of Steven Jay Gould, which says that religion and science are asking very different questions and looking for different answers. Science and religion represents distinct areas of expertise or as Gould puts it, different magisteria. Bear with me a minute here while I explain. The Latin word magisterium means a "domains of authority in teaching." He means the sort of teaching which is not authoritarian, but which uses the tools of debate and dialogue. Questions and challenges are to be encouraged. It does not, he points out, mean majesty, which would imply "we fall into silent awe or imposed obedience." (page 6)
So "the net, or magisterium, of science covers the empirical realm: what is the universe made of {fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty). To cite the old clichés, science gets the age of rocks, and religion gets the rock of ages; science studies how the heavens go, religion how to go to heaven." (p. 6)
Gould advocates a clear separation between science and religion... or a Principle of Non-Overlapping Magisteria or NOMA. In short, religion stays on one side and science on the other. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't talk to each other in earnest dialogue. The image he draws is that they should be "belly to belly." There should be a respectful, if challenging conversations between the two as equals.
As an example, Gould takes the case of Charles Darwin. Darwin himself seemed to subscribe to this principle (although the name principle of NOMA hadn't come along yet since Gould made it up). "In short, Darwin footed his views about science and morality in the principle of NOMA. Darwin did not use evolution to promote atheism or to maintain that there wasn't any concept of God which could be squared with nature. Rather, he argues that nature's factuality, as read with the magisterium of science, could not resolve, or even specify, the existence or character of God, the ultimate meaning of life, the proper foundation of morality, or any other question within the different magisterium of religion." (p. 192)
As I said in a prior sermon (March 2004), Darwin after the death of his beloved 10 year old daughter became doubtful about the existence of a personal God, the kind of God he had grown up with, the God who governed every detail of our lives and whose ways were a mystery. This was a different reaction, I think you'll agree, from Job in the Hebrew Bible. Darwin then became a Unitarian and thought more about chance or randomness in the unfolding of the universe.
Gould wholeheartedly agrees with Darwin. In fact, he feels that it protects religion not to tie it to the benevolence of the universe. What if the universe is indifferent to us after all? What if we find it is really amoral? Not immoral, but amoral. In other words, not a warm fuzzy place, meant to coddle us, but a cold, harsh reality where we no existence is guaranteed, not even human existence. Do we then abandon all morals? Gould (and Darwin) would say "No!" We must look to ourselves for inspiration and insight. That is what I mean by a more humanistic view.
On the other hand, many liberal clergy and progressive people of a spiritual nature take another approach to this whole question of science and religion. They are more what Gould called "syncretistic." I had to this look up to make sure I got the meaning right. In one dictionary "syncretism" is defined as "The attempted reconciliation or union of two dissimilar or opposing principles, practices, or parties, as in philosophy or religion." Obviously, Gould did not approve of this approach.
These are the folks who believe that science and religion can somehow merge and thereby enrich each other. Examples of this might be the writings and popular television shows of scientists Carl Sagan and Steven Hawking. The way they spoke about time and the universe is truly mystical. Ursula Goodenough, author of The Sacred Depths of Nature, is another much admired and inspiring science writer. Some of these scientists talk about discerning the hand of God in the mysteries and wonder of the universe or some sort of cosmic consciousness.
Gould, as you could probably guess, was skeptical about there being an intelligent, conscious designer in back of evolution and that it is all going in the "right" direction. Unfortunately, he died a short while ago, so this dialogue with him cannot continue. His challenging contributions will be missed.
I know that several of our UU ministers fall into this group that merges science and religion at their boundaries. Some call themselves religious naturalists. I find myself to be more among this group. It is frankly more comforting. It tells me that all is interconnected, that certainly morality and science need each other and that maybe all will be well in the long run. This group has its philosophical routes in Unitarians of over a century ago, with such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists. Kenneth Patton was a famous Universalist minister at the Charles Meetinghouse in Boston in the 20th Century. He called himself a mystical naturalist.
I saw a flyer a few months ago in one of the monthly mailing from our association. It said that Gary Kowalski, a UU minister in Burlington, Vermont, had recently come out with a book titled Science and the Search for God. Right up my alley, I thought and I sent away for it.
In it, Kowalski describes Albert Einstein's awe of the universe and of the world of nature. In fact, the book opens with a quote from Einstein about the unity of nature, including us in nature:
"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optional 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 to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
Widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Einstein said that? The brilliant physicist? Yes, indeed.. Einstein sounding more like a Buddhist than a scientist.
A similar feeling - a connectedness to the whole-has been voiced by others since. As scientists become more conscious of how the world is a living system, where each part, the air, the ocean and the land, depends upon the other, the Gaia principle arose. Lynn Margulis, a microbiologist, first proposed this metaphor... and it has gradually caught on, even among scientists. (Gaia, by the way, is the name of an ancient earth goddess.)
More and more, many people view the world as a living body where the oceans and atmosphere depend upon each other for balance and health in a kind of symbiotic relationship. When one part is thrown off (for instance, by too much carbon emission), everything else is affected. And it is everyone's responsibility to protect this delicate balance, to protect Gaia or Mother Earth.
Does this sound familiar? This is reflected in our seventh UU principle, "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part."
Despite what Steven Jay Gould might have thought, this is not bad science. It is not magical thinking, but a meaningful metaphor which we can grasp. It is an image which has inspired the passions of many in the environmental movement. It has moved people as they watch Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth," which my family and I saw this summer in Hingham. It's a film about global warming. Although presented with Al Gore's dry humor, it is something to be taken very seriously.
I put myself in this camp of people who are willing to merge science and religion at a way of thinking about our natural world. We are smart enough, I hope, to know that some of it is metaphorical - and not to be taken literally.
I think we ought to heed the warnings of Gould and be careful not to violate the NOMA principle. Science and religion should, at times, be kept clearly and respectfully apart. We should not try to use the findings of quantum physics to "prove" that our prayers alone can affect the outcome of some event far away. This, I fear, is just wishful and magical thinking. We should not use science to try to prove or disprove the existence of God. That is squarely in the realm of religion.
I'll end as I began, with the words of Mary Oliver: "When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms." Let us all be amazed at the world and take it lovingly into our arms. Amen.
Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York: Ballantine Books, 1999.
Gary Kowalski, Science and the Search for God. New York: Lantern Books, 2003.