From Chapter 21—Are Science and Religion in Conflict? © 2020 by Emory Lynn.
As is evident now from examples given here, many claims of theological importance involving the actions of a personal and immanent God fit comfortably within the magisterium of science. This contradicts the non-overlapping premise of the NOMA concept. Where the magisteria often do overlap, science has repeatedly conflicted with religion by discovering contradictory evidence or failing to find supporting evidence where it should exist. In fact, science has yet to discover evidence of any observable effect on the natural world caused by anything supernatural.
Not only does conflict exist between science and religion in their answers to the mysteries in the overlapping regions, the methodologies used to derive the answers are in serious conflict. Science and religion operate within strikingly different paradigms.5 Science is based on reason, logic, empirical evidence, mathematics and the self-correcting features of falsifiability and verification by the scientific community. Religions are based on faith and divine revelation. It’s quite a stretch to identify any adequate self-correcting feature in a religious paradigm. Religions predominately rely on Type I faith (intransigent—all evidence is contradictory) and Type II faith (willful belief where there is insufficient or no evidence either way to make a rational choice). Scientists resort to faith at times, such as to initiate a hypothesis and get the ball rolling. This is a different kind of faith (Type III—supporting evidence is available but isn’t sufficient by itself to close the deal). The inclusion of Type III faith in a scientific hypothesis will eventually be replaced by sufficient evidence if the hypothesis proves to be valid.
Scientific principles must be falsifiable, but religions are awash in principles that can’t be proven true or false. For example, a god that is allegedly transcendent or otherworldly is a god that is incomprehensible and nothing reasonable can be determined regarding its existence. Likewise, a god that exists outside of time can have no influence on our universe where everything we know involves space-time. That kind of god could hold no relevance to humans and might as well not exist.
In Chapter 8 (Understanding Science) I discussed examples of the self-correcting nature of science (the scientific community throwing cold water on cold fusion and putting the brakes on faster than light neutrinos) and a lack of self-correction in religion (Oral Roberts’ claim that God would “call him home” if he didn’t raise $8 million, and Jesse DuPlantis’ claim of having visited heaven). Even when religious authorities do make an extraordinary effort at self-correction, the effort might yield no correction. Recall that at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, Christian bishops went to great lengths to establish a doctrine to describe the divine nature of Jesus. There were heresies about the nature of Jesus that needed correcting, so the council pieced together the “right” thinking that would be polished and finalized as orthodoxy in the following decades. The doctrine of the Trinity is now a cornerstone of the Christian religion, yet it is an absurdly illogical contrivance that is contradicted by many passages in the Bible. It stands on only one leg—religious faith. In stark contrast to the scientific paradigm, religious paradigms simply don’t have adequate means for filtering out errors if the culture involved chooses to believe the errors are true.
Science has caused considerable cognitive dissonance among the religious, yet we know full well that science works. It’s sobering to contemplate what our lives would be like in the 21st century without science. To manage the dissonance, the faithful embrace science when it tends to support their beliefs and ignore or disparage science when it conflicts with their beliefs. Science will continue to create cognitive dissonance to religious thinking because, contrary to the NOMA concept, there is considerable overlap between the magisterium of science and the magisterium of personal-god religions, and in this common ground there is serious conflict.
Some scientists attempt to escape the conflict in their personal lives. Anthropologist Pascal Boyer describes how they go about this in his book Religion Explained:
[A] way of escaping the conflict is the attempt, especially popular among some scientists, to create a purified religion, a metaphysical doctrine that saves some aspects of religious concepts (there is a creative force, it is difficult for us to know it, it explains why the world is the way it is, etc.) but removes all traces of inconvenient “superstition” (e.g., God is hearing me, people got a disease as a punishment for their sins, accomplishing the ritual in the right way is essential, etc.). Is such a religion compatible with science? It certainly is because it was designed for that very purpose. Is it likely to become what we usually call a religion? Hardly.6
Some scientific organizations have refused to acknowledge that conflict exists, in a conciliatory effort to avoid hard feelings. Even the National Academy of Sciences has bowed to such conciliation:
Science and religion are based on different aspects of human experience. In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based observations or experiments that conflict with an explanation eventually must lead to modification or even abandonment of that explanation. Religious faith, in contrast, does not depend only on empirical evidence, is not necessarily modified in the face of conflicting evidence, and typically involves supernatural forces or entities. Because they are not a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science. In this sense, science and religion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in different ways. Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.7
NAS put forth this organization level statement, apparently for political expediency; however, by and large its members surely know that serious and unavoidable conflict exists between science and religion.
While it may appear open-minded, modest, and comforting to many, this conciliatory view is nonsense. Science and religion are diametrically opposed at their deepest philosophical levels. And, because the two worldviews make claims to the same intellectual territory—that of the origin of the universe and humankind’s relationship to it—conflict is inevitable.
— Norman F. Hall and Lucia K. B. Hall8
Notes:
5. For a good discussion of paradigms and their evaluation: Professor James Hall, The Philosophy of Religion, Lecture 30, Evaluating Paradigms, (The Teaching Company, 2003).
6. Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, (Basic Books, 2001), p 321.
7. Science, Evolution, and Creationism, National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine, (National Academies Press, 2008), p 12.
8. Norman F. Hall and Lucia K. B. Hall, Is the War Between Science and Religion Over?, (Humanist magazine, May/June 1986), p 26.
