Can Faith and Science Be Reconciled? (Part 4 of 4)

Rather than seeing creeds as simply but extremely valuable, religious people have in the past rather made them ultimate standards by which all other beliefs and all other disciplines are judged. But science is not immune to the same phenomenon. As Niebuhr states:

“It does not seem entirely a figure of speech to say that sometimes for some devotees of science, if not for scientists themselves, the scientific method itself has become a god. It determines, if not all value, then at least all truth; what it reveals is held to be indisputably true, what is untrue for it is false.”

So where is the conflict between religion and science? Niebuhr insists the conflict is less with, what he terms, “the religious element of religion” than it is with the “truth systems” of closed society faith. A closed society perspective in any discipline inherently suppresses universal truth. When a particular discipline - be it religion, science or politics – looks only to itself for foundational truth as well as the affirmation of that truth, it values itself ahead of all. It is more interested in self-preservation than universal good. “Science which makes universal truth its cause,” Niebuhr says, “takes its place alongside universal religious faith and the politics that is guided by universal loyalty, not without tension to be sure, but with some community of spirit.” There is no question that each discipline naturally seeks supremacy against the others. As institutions employing humans and by extension their flawed reason, they are all prone to this. If there has ever been a widespread mutual respect between science and religion, we are probably farthest from that period right now. Science seeks to, and indeed some claim it already has, nullify religion. Richard Dawkins, for example, will hardly hear a religious argument since he considers it a discipline without substance or value. Religion, in response, defends itself too often not by an appeal to common reason but rather to defensiveness itself – and a rather shallow and unbecoming defensiveness at that. Would we be any quicker to correct a scriptural misunderstanding than we were in Galileo’s time? Of course we would. There is no longer a universal arbiter of truth like the Catholic Church was at that time, which is why it is a somewhat spurious endeavor to see the modern church through the lens of the 14th and 15th centuries. While the ultimate good of this lack of final religious authority is of some debate, one thing is certain: the extent of a doctrinal error will never again be as widespread nor its consequences as extreme. Radical monotheism,” Niebuhr summarizes, “can have no quarrel with humanism and naturalism insofar as these are protests against the religions and ethics of closed societies, centering in little gods – or in little ideas of God.” Saying, as many have, that all truth is God’s truth, is not saying that His truth resides, exhaustively, in the minds and books of the professionally religious or in the minds of those who are called Christians. We too often forget that there is much to be learned from the professionals and adherents of other disciplines who also deliver God’s truth. Christians are sometimes loath to accept these truths because they are delivered in language that is technical rather than religious. But they are nonetheless elements of God’s truth. Too often it seems – in politics, religion, and science - we are more interested in fighting against those who don’t speak like us than we are in first understanding what others are saying. ***************** This is Part 4 and concludes the series. Click here to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3