SCIENCE AND RELIGION


November15th 1998


The next issue, Number 30, will appear on December15th 1998.





The relation between Science and Religion is a serious matter; it is also a favourite talking point in broadcast discussions and in the semi-serious press. The main stale old conclusions reached - or assumed in advance - are quite inadequate to the seriousness of the question; they are

EITHER

that: 1) Science and Religion are absolutely compatible both being statements of different aspects of something thought of as THE TRUTH. Science, it is said, answers the question "How .... " and Religion answers the question "Why ..."

OR

that: 2) Science and Religion are absolutely incompatible. Science ,it is said, rests upon data and logic without resort to prior assumptions while religion rests upon unproven prior assumptions and a selective use of logic. In short, Science is true knowledge while Religion is fantasy - only accidentally and patchily true or logical.

My thesis is that Science and Religion are related in much more complex ways than the above simplicities suggest. They both rest upon unprovable assumptions, they both entail the construction of conceptual models but they, respectively, rest upon essentially different epistemologies.

Moreover, Science can and does generate technology - knowhow that actually works; knowhow is the authentication of science and the source of its popular standing. Religion generates mental furniture that satisfies, disturbs, enhances, diminishes, the minds that are so furnished and generates actions that may be anything from the sublime to the ridiculous to the psychopathological.



The first and most needful revision of the simplistic view of Science set out above is that it does actually rest upon unprovable assumptions. Some of these are common both to Science and to Religion, as ordinarily understood; they include the notion that we are material entities living in a real material world of which at least some knowledge is open to us by way of our senses and our brains - that we have some choices, some knowledge of causation and consequently some responsibility for our own actions or lack thereof. All these assumptions can be, and have been, challenged but they remain the common stock of more or less tacit perceptions of most people, religious or otherwise.

Two assumptions, although commonly held by people generally, are especially characteristic of Science and indeed central to its practice:

1) that induction - the process purporting to identify a general truth by the accumulated weight of particular instances - is absolutely dependable. Clearly induction is to some degree dependable in so far as it is part of the basis for the knowhow we actually have and that we must, inescapably, apply to the needs of daily life.

However, it is easy to show that induction is suspect - by the following argument:

On the one hand, there are numerous instances of human death from a nearly endless variety of causes; by induction we can say that human beings, sooner or later, die; I am a typical human being - therefore, sooner or later I shall die. On the other hand there have been well over twenty thousand daily occasions upon which I could have said "I shall be alive this time tomorrow" and it has indeed happened; I am still alive. By induction, if I say the same thing now then it would be true once again and, by extension, I can repeat the exercise again and again. Therefore I am not mortal.

If induction leads us to diametrically opposite conclusions on the same subject - depending on the data you select - then evidently induction has its failings. There is no great sophistication in this; it is common parlance to say that "experience is the best teacher" (note that we do not say that "experience is an infallible teacher") and we also say "there's always a first time".

2) the uniformity of nature is assumed - but cannot be proved because the inductive argument .....'Nature is uniform so far as we can tell (otherwise knowhow would be impossible ) therefore uniformity of nature is universal' ...... simply does not hold up - by reason of the essential undependability of induction. Our experience of nature's uniformity can as well be explained by supposing that there are 'islands of uniformity in a sea of chaos' as by supposing that uniformity is ubiquitous. We cannot, it would seem, know for certain which of these explanations for the uniformity of nature, inferred from knowhow, is the true one.

It gets us nowhere to speak of the dependability of the laws of nature - even supposing that we know and understand them all (which, presumably, we do not). It is perfectly possible that a law of nature may be changing by small steps which pass unnoticed but which, cumulatively, can shatter the law. The notion of qualitative change, arising from accumulating quantitative changes, is scarcely original. It is enshrined in common parlance as 'the last straw breaks the camel's back"; it is also an essential feature of the processes of evolution seen as arising from natural selection. There is no a priori ground for supposing that the laws of nature are necessarily unlike camels' backs in this respect.

Increasingly, and because of an enhanced appreciation of the history of scientific advance, scientists are decreasingly speaking of discovering THE TRUTH and increasingly speaking of conceptual models. Given the data, it is possible to say coherently that the universe is as if it originated with a Big Bang and it is as if living matter has evolved from inanimate origins. These conceptual models do not have to be absolutely true (they only need to sufficiently true) to accommodate the data in a non-contradictory manner and, in many instances, are sufficiently true to have led to real knowhow. We do not know, never have known, likely never shall know, all that there is to know about, say, nuclear science but our relevant models are sufficiently true to enable us to make nuclear bombs that do really explode and nuclear reactors that do really generate heat in a controlled manner.

The fact remains that Science rests upon dubitable assumptions and these are its Achilles Heel.

Religion has, traditionally, been a deductive business flowing from supposedly indubitable assumptions - dogmas - which are regarded as Citadels of Absolute Truth.

Regarding assumptions, the contrast between the Achilles Heel theory with the Citadel of Truth theory locates the real distinction between Science and Religion.

Or, it did - until liberal religion came on the scene. The liberal believer seems to be ill at ease with dogma and, instead, seems to be buying into conceptual models. Instead of saying "Jesus was/is God Incarnate" they tend to be saying "It is if there is a God and it is as if Jesus was/is His Incarnation."

It is presumably the standing that Science has achieved, as well as the horrors of rampant piety, that has made Religion lean to liberalism. It is to be hoped that naive scientists do not start to claim that their conceptual models are Absolutely True. That would be ironic at best and counter-productive at worst.





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