PhD Thesis on Religion

I grew up with the impression that science and religion were incompatible. Maybe it was because I went to Catholic school, and my religion teacher thought I was trying to be sarcastic when I asked things like, "If the pope is infallible, why did he say that Galileo was wrong about the sun being the center of the universe?" When she answered, "Because the pope didn't know any better," I said, "Isn't he supposed to know better if he's the pope?" And the teacher told me to stop asking dumb questions and said we'd get into it later (which of course we never did). So out of fear of flunking Catholic school, I adopted the policy that what was taught in science class applied only to science, and ditto for religion. Five years later, I realize that maybe my questions weren't so dumb. Some people spend their lives trying to bring out the similarities between religion and science, while others spend their lives trying to tear the two apart. For my paper, I wanted to explore possible reasons why these two opposing sides have never been able to find common ground enough to unite upon.

 

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Research on this topic began with a psychologist named, James H. Leuba and his landmark survey of 1914. He found that 58% of 1,000 randomly selected scientists expressed disbelief or doubt in the existence of God. And that figure rose to nearly 70% in later years. Leuba repeated his survey in somewhat different form 20 years later, and found that these percentages would increase to 85%. In 1996, the survey was repeated and found out that very little has changed. 60.7% still express disbelief in religion and a mere 7% do believe in the man upstairs. I wonder where did all the faith go?

One reason religion is unwilling to familiarize itself with science because science offers simple, valid, irrefutable and, above all, logical explanations for some of the "miracles" described in holy books. The Nile, for example, is known to turn red when it is overgrown with bacteria. Sorry, Moses. Carbon dating of fossils tells us that there was life on this planet long before the estimated time of the creation of Adam and Eve. Sorry, God. You can see where the religious leaders might get a little worried that their congregations would begin to fall away from the belief that an invisible man in the sky makes miracles happen, if too many explanations which appeal to their more rational way of thinking were to come up.

The Big Bang theory is an idea that the universe is expanding. Just like when you toss a grenade in the air and it explodes and you take a slow motion picture of it and each little piece is a galaxy flying out in all different directions. When you look through a telescope, the red shift of light indicates, they believe, that star galaxies are receding from us and everything is getting farther away. Therefore, they conclude, the universe is exploding. When this theory first came out, some Christians said, "Aha, that means it had a beginning."

The most important part of the definition of science is the Scientific Method. It is what makes science so good at allowing us to understand our world. The Greeks thought that they figure everything out by pure thought, that is, by philosophy alone. Maybe, but given that people can and do come up with wrong ideas, it is better to have some type of filter to detect fallacious reasoning. The word hypothesis when used in science means, a tentative assumption made in order to draw out and test its logical or empirical consequences, it is an educated guess to explain a phenomenon. When a hypothesis agrees well with experiments, we gain confidence that it is in some way "correct" and we distinguish these hypotheses from their less valuable counterparts by referring to them as theories.

Religion was just a quick answer to most questions back in the prehistoric days. Where did we come from? What happens when we die? Where did the universe start? Why are we here? Blah, Blah, Blah. No one knew the answer so they just invented a quick solution that would answer any question. God did it, believe in him or go to hell. Some people might say that if you believe in God you won't lose anything and you'll have a chance of going to heave where as if you don't believe in God you have no chance of going to Heaven and have a chance of going to Hell. Well how do you know which God to believe in? There are thousands of "versions" of Christianity and like a million different Gods. How do you know which is the true one? It would be a real dilemma if the true religion were some God that was worshipped on some island in Malaysia that only 100 people heard of. Could it be that religion is just used as control for morally weak people who can't answer their own problems and just think that if they believe in this God all their problems will go away?

The most well known incidence displaying the dangers of faith involved the Catholic church and Galileo. One of the many discoveries Galileo had made with his telescope was that the planet Jupiter had four moons known today as the Galilean Moons: Ganymede, Io, Europa, and Callisto that revolve around it and that the planet Venus undergoes phases similar to those of the moon. This did several things. First, it proved that there was more than one point in the solar system that things revolved around and also it strongly suggested that Venus orbited the sun. Now the Church as this time advocated the Aristotelian view that everything revolved around the earth as opposed the Copernican theory that says the planets go around the sun. When church authorities learned that Galileo published the book, "Dialogue," that supported the Copernican theory, they had him arrested and put on trial. Galileo's defense was simple enough: they could look through his telescope and his accusers could see for themselves the truth. However, they refused to do this because they believed that the very act of looking through the telescope would undermine their faith! Galileo was found guilty and sentenced to house arrest.

The problem with religion and science is that religion can be disproven by scientific means. In fact, this has been going on for a long time ever since Galileo, but the Catholic Church and others have managed to pretend that this is not the case. Unfortunately, science can also be disproven by one's faith and saying, "God has to exist because I believe in him." Many scientists will not accept that argument.

There are those, of course, who would argue that the Torah and the Bible are not meant to be taken literally but figuratively; that Adam and Eve are representative of all men and women, that the story of the Creation in seven "days" is meant to be a more figurative term for a longer amount of time (substitute the word "eon" for "day" in the Creation story and you'll get what I mean). That's nice and all, but it begs the question, where does the line between figurative and literal translations end? For example, the story of Esther, which, as opposed to some other stories in the Bible, is very specific when it comes to times, dates, names and places - not only that, but the story is historically supported as it is written. Should we apply the figurative translation to something that is so obviously meant literally? Of course not. So when does the figurative translation end and the literal begin? This is one question which scientists and theologians still have not been able to come up with a satisfactory answer to.

Another difference that I have found between science and religion is the definition of "truth". To the scientist, who is more skeptical, truth is ever changing and the more one sees of the world, the more observations one makes, the closer one comes to the truth. In laymen's terms, the truth is out there. It is the goal which may not ever be attained, but that certainly won't stop the scientist from coming as close as she can. The scientist does not define "truth" by what it is, but rather by taking away the attributes which truth is not. In this manner, the definition of truth is always changing and never finalized. The theologian, on the other hand, defines truth as that which is printed in the Holy Texts, that which comes from the mouth of God Himself (although personally I believe that if there is a god, she would have to be a woman because of all the luck I don't possess with this life I lead). Truth is absolute, definitive, unchanging and final. You can see the truth, touch it, and feel it.

Although there are undeniably many differences between the issues encompassed by science and religion, few people ever take the time to realize how similar in nature the two really are. Think about it, both science and religion have their own set of books from whence all their information is drawn, instructors (Mr. Snelling, please forgive me for comparing a great instructor like you to a pastor), philosophies of life and death, instructions and jargon. It's actually a little creepy to think of how similar these two spheres really are, for science is a religion in and of itself, and religion is a type of science. Both are learned practices; no one is born with an instinctive knowledge of the divine just as no one is born with an automatic knowledge of biochemistry. Perhaps the reason why these two fields can never seem to quite get along is because they are too similar in their nature while being dissimilar in their specific outlooks.

According to the most recent Gallup poll, 47% of Americans do believe that God created human beings at one time within the last ten thousand years. While 49% believe that human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, including 40% who say that God guided the process, and 9% say God had nothing to do with it. If I took the survey I would say God guided us to who we are today. I believe God made the apes and monkies who later evolved into who we are today and gave us a hand in our evolutionary changes. Or I could be wrong.

Evolution can be a difficult concept for people to come to terms with, especially if they do not have much experience with life sciences. Is evolution a fact or a theory? Or is it both? Does evolution explain the origin of life or not? These are important questions which people need to be able to understand and answer. Evolution is not a minor matter, but it is, in fact, the edge of all modern biology. Like evolution creationism can have more than one meaning. At its most basic, creationism is the belief that the universe was created by a deity of some sort, but after that, there is quite a lot of variety among creationists as to just what they believe and why. People may put together all creationists together in one group, but it is important to understand where they differ and why.

I think that people like to mix science and religion because of the faith they have in science. It has a basis in unemotional experiment and evidence. On the other hand religion has been practiced though the ages as a means of control by priesthood over everyone else. If science can explain things, then faith becomes a lot easier. I think that religion is best practiced as a personal method of learning about yourself and your relationship to the rest of Life. To know yourself, to know God and beyond. This does not need to conflict with science, nor does it need to be validated by science. If you wish to be truly free, then you must be fully responsible for your own state of mind and heart. It is up to you to validate your own truths.

Science and religion are related to each other in ways both strange and familiar - for example, we can imagine that there are people raised in religious backgrounds who find science to be more practical and logical than the Invisible Man in the Sky, but what most people don't realize is that a majority of scientists are religious, not atheists. Very often it seems as though evolution and religion must be locked in a desperate struggle of life and death. For some religious beliefs, perhaps that impression is reasonably accurate. However, the fact that some religions and some religious dogmas are not entirely compatible with evolutionary biology does not mean that the same must be true for all religions or religion generally.

Science and religion are two systems with the same goal and that is to explain the universe. Both system require you to have faith. One asks for your faith perpetually, the one ask for it until they get an accurate answer. People who have strong emotional ties to religion because they grew up in a religious community that they felt had a positive influence on them and also have a strongly scientific overview of the world will always be likely to put these two together. Also, like putting light and darkness together, you'll end up with a gray fog that clouds the mind.

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