They got me thinking about something written by someone I know from a different website. She is a really neat person and I enjoy reading her posts. She has never been a JW. She is a scientist and a Christian. She wrote about the relationship between faith and science. I don't know how much this subject has been discussed before, but I thought some of you might enjoy it.
I am often torn two ways, by both my sisters-in-Christ and by my working brothers in my professional, by comments that are discounting to whichever portion of my philosophical life that person doesn't share. I believe it is possible to be both rigourously scientific, and devoutly faithful, without any internal conflict. As a scientist -- applied, at least -- myself, I offer the following essay for consideration:
A respected scientist recently condemned Christianity as "essentially irrational". I frequently hear the assertion that "science has disproved Christianity". On the other hand I hear about "the faithless arrogance of scientists" or that science teachers, in teaching something that is "just a theory", are engaged in an assault against Christianity. Caught in the middle are Christian scientists (as opposed to Christian Scientists <g>) who occasionally claim that in fact science supports or even proves the claims of Christianity.
I contend that all three of these perspectives betray a basic misunderstanding of the nature of faith, science, and the relationship between them.
Yes, faith is irrational. So are oranges, "Die Fledermaus", and pi. "Irrational" is not an inherently negative term; it simply refers to something that cannot be systematicly reduced to a root concept or idea. Why would we be offended at the claim that our faith cannot be reduced? The great modern theologians like Emmanuel Kant recognised this in the concept of "the leap of faith"; we make such leaps on a regular basis. Is play rational? Is love rational? No. But they are none-the-less real.
Why, for that matter, would someone expect faith to follow the rules of "rationality" that are appropriate to an entirely different domain of hman experience, to whit, science? For the most part, that notion begins with the theologian/mathematician Rene Descartes. Descartes, of "I think, therefor I am" fame, nearly single-handedly transformed the philosophy of the western world. His concept of the number-line demonstrated that arithmetic clearly has no limits at either positive or negative infinity. Although arithmetic has no intrinsic reality -- it is only a self-consistent analytical system -- it is used in daily experience to help us understand *reality*. If arithmetic demonstrates that no "first cause" is necessary, then how can we claim that *reality's* need for a "first cause" proves the existence of God?
By combining two or three number-lines, Descartes created "Cartesian planes" and "Cartesian spaces" in which arithmetic could be used to study shapes and solids. At a simplistic level, this suggested another "proof" for the existence of God: that as an (infinite) plane is required to contain an (infinite) line, and a space is required to contain a plane, so eventually one must come to a "first context" which sustains all subordinate contexts. Some Christian theologians adopted this concept of the "first context" to replace the "first cause" argument, but no great mathematical insight is required to see that they are manifestations of the same idea, and subject to the same fallacy. A more important effect of this new mathematics was that it broke forever the previously-impervious barrier between algebraic reasoning and Euclidean reasoning. If that impervious barrier could be broken, why not the barrier between philosophy and science? Could not science and mathematics be used to describe *everything*? Hence the Age of Reason was born, with Rene Descartes as its father. Christian apologists, few of whom understood the rational of their aruguments with anything approaching Descarte's acuity, began explaining to the world how science "proved" Christianity.
Descartes himself did not buy in to the fallacies of the Age of Reason. "Cogito, ergo sum" (I think, therefor I am) is *not* a rational argument. It does not "prove" the existance of God, nor does it intend to. Yet, it is essentially "scientific". Because SCIENCE IS NOT ABOUT PROOF! Science is not about "facts". Science is a method!!!
The scientific method is as follows: the scientist makes careful, detailed *observations*. "Observations" are the only part of science that has an inarguable claim to be "fact". A fact is something like "an apple, held at a distance above the ground and then released, accellerates toward the ground". The scientist then imagines a theory that explains the observation: "an invisible attractive force acts between two masses", and may have to create certain definitions as part of the theory: "that force being called gravity". The scientist then uses his theory to predict some *different* behaviour than has previously been observed, and sets up certain conditions in which that behaviour *can* be observed. An experiment is never a "failure", whether the predicted behaviour is observed or not, as long as it adds to the body of "observations" from which new theories can be imagined. In fact, the experiments that non-scientists consider "failures" are the most exciting, because the scientist must then refine his theory, or create a new one, that adequately explains *all* the observations. The experiments must also be repeatable by different scientists, so that the observations are utterly objective. Scientific theories are continually being refined, as we add to humanities experience. A shallow or simplistic understanding of a theory can usually be shown to have multiple flaws; but the advanced scientific statement of the theory is always considerably more robust.
We should all be concerned if our science teachers are teaching theory as fact. Not because theories are suspect -- the atomic theory of matter, the theory of gravity, magnetic field theory, and so on are all "just" theories -- but because teaching "fact" instead of "method" presupposes that answers are more important than questions. And when we stop questioning, science stops. Even -- or perhaps especially -- when a theory challenges the teachings of our religion, our children benefit from examining both the observations that the theory explains, and the testing that the theory has undergone. A theory may be the simplest explaination of all available observations, and still be wrong.
Should the same method be applied to our faith? Should we build theories based on doctrine or dogma, and then apply them to rigorous testing to set faith up as a competitor to Science? I say, with Descartes, a hearty "No". Science is utterly objective; faith occurs inside our hearts, the gift of grace, utterly subjective. Science and faith are as different as "taste" and "sleep" -- neither related, nor complementary, nor mutually exclusive. To hold one up in condemnation of the other is specious.
I experience Jesus in an utterly personal way. That is not Science. It is the essence of Faith.
I look forward to hearing what you have to say about it.
AmazingProgeny