I got an email recently from “Loren,” who sought to inform me,
Science is knowledge of proven facts, religion is a belief system based on unproven theory. The matter is closed, science is alive and growing where as religion is based on ancient history.
That’s all she wrote. (I know both men and women named Loren, so I’ll take a random guess at it and use female pronouns. If I’m wrong on that I’ll make the correction, with apologies.)
I’ll say one thing for this message: it’s a marvel of pithy communication. In just two sentences it expresses a mood that pervades the very atmosphere of our modern Western world. It wafts through the air of our universities, rarely noticed, rarely questioned.
For that reason it calls for a serious response. It cannot be lightly dismissed, even though (unfortunately for Loren), there is almost nothing of substance in it. It certainly has little to offer by way of factual accuracy. I want to take a moment to explain why I say that, and then later, in a follow-up post, I’ll take a closer look at the mood of the message.
“Science Is Knowledge of Proven Facts”
I’ll start with with her description of science. Science certainly deals with proven facts (or at least it does for those who accept scientific realism and are willing to waffle on niceties like the way that, once upon a time, Newtonian physics was thought to be proven). To say that’s what science is, however, is to diminish considerably what science deals with. I don’t know of any actual scientist who would be happy with that as a definition. (Instrumentalists and other anti-realists would take particularly strong exception to it.)
Based on Unproven Theory
But maybe Loren wasn’t speaking definitionally. She goes on to mention what it is she thinks religion is based on, so maybe she means science is based on proven facts. Unfortunately that’s wrong, too, whether she means science is historically, methodologically, or theoretically based on proven facts.
Consider the historical basis of science. Its early development and progress were based on assumptions about the nature of physical reality: that it is knowable, that it is worth our spending time on learning it, that progress can be made in the effort, that reality is rational, that the material world is not evil. Most of us in the Western world could hardly imagine that anyone has ever doubted that, but in fact those assumptions originally came from a specific source: Christian theism (see Hannam’s The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution).
Science and Ancient History
Some people object to that, reminding us that the Greeks kicked off science and got it going well ahead of the Christian Middle Ages. To that I have two responses. First, there’s no denying the Greeks’ contribution. Their part in it was crucial, as was the Arabs’ understanding of mathematics. It all came together in Christian Europe, which made the theoretical contribution I have already outlined in very brief form. It’s not either-or. All of these were essential sources in the causal stream that produced modern science.
But what difference does that make to Loren, anyway? She has no respect for knowledge that’s “based on ancient history.” Whatever Archimedes and Aristotle did for science, apparently for Loren it must be worthless—which shows how odd her position is. It forces her to accept European Christianity as practically the only stream of thought contributing to the scientific revolution. That’s not my view, but it’s the one Loren would have to agree to, considering that she rejects “ancient history.”
When we speak of the historical development of science, by the way, we’re speaking of the growth of science’s methodologies, so what’s been said above applies to science’s being methodologically based in proven fact. There is no single scientific methodology, anyway; and what scientific method there is, is based on trial and error experience built on the foundation of beliefs I’ve just mentioned.
Physics as the Proven Basis for Science?
Now instead of the historical or methodological basis for science, we could think instead of science as based in physics, which many regard as the ultimate science. So here’s a quick question for all you physical scientists out there: how thoroughly proved is the Standard Model? Or, to put it another way, why have we spent billions of dollars on trying to show whether the Higgs boson is for real? The most basic theories in physics remain unproven.
Religion: Wrong in Just Three Words
What about Loren’s view of religion? Well, it doesn’t take long for her to fall into significant error there, too. She writes, “Religion is a …” and she’s wrong already. There is no agreed definition of “religion,” but however you view it, religion is not singular. Religions are plural by the thousands (at least).
What About Unproven Theory?
She goes on to say “physics is a belief system based on unproven theory.” Wait, no, she didn’t say that; but if she had, she would have been right on the money. Religions as belief systems are based on unproven theory too, if by proof, one means something like mathematical certainty. Somehow physics works for us, even though its fundamental theorems are unproven, so I don’t know why religion couldn’t work without proof, too.
Of course I’m not interested in defending religion. I believe Christianity is true, and that other belief systems are true in the points where they agree with Christianity, false where they disagree.
Alive and Growing
Much of what Christianity relies on is ancient history, as Loren astutely points out. I’m not quite sure how that counts against its truth or its value, though. From the structure of her sentence it seems that “based on ancient history” stands in contrast to “alive and growing.” But what does that mean?
Certainly the body of knowledge that we count as science is growing rapidly. The sign in my grad school’s computer store read, “Technology has come a long way since this morning.” I wouldn’t take anything away from that, not for a moment. That’s what science is for; it’s what it’s good at; it does it very well.
Christianity is for something else. It is not primarily for the advancement of knowledge of the material world. It is for advancement of knowledge of God, self, and others as spiritual beings. It is for advancement of relationships and the moral life in communion with God and community with others. It is for the full integration of body, mind, and spirit in the context of a world that is both material and spiritual. It is for life that lasts forever. It is about you and me being (in Loren’s words) “alive and growing.”
Bottom Line: Loren is Utterly Wrong
So whatever Loren wanted to tell me in this email about science’s superiority over religion, it has no factual basis whatever (at least where Christianity is concerned). It’s wrong. False. Not true. A belief that’s worthy only of being discarded.
But She’s Not Alone In It
And yet… what Loren wrote there sounds very, very familiar. She is expressing something very common and very real, in a cultural sense. I described it above as a mood, an atmosphere, a feeling in the air, that says science is superior to all religion and is in the process of supplanting it. That mood calls for further reflection. I’ll follow up with that here in a day or two.
Update: Part Two is posted now