Science, religion do go hand-in-hand
Conflict should give way to complementary studies that answer both questions
Recently, Julie Payette, the new Governor General of Canada, created a minor furor when she addressed the Canadian Science Policy Conference in Ottawa. She praised scientific progress and achievement and castigated those who clung to pernicious and outmoded ideas, including militant religious fundamentalism.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his book “The Great Partnership, Science Religion and the Search for Meaning,” maintains religions work best when they are open and accountable to the world. When they develop into closed systems and sectarian modes of community, when they place great weight on the afterlife or divine intervention into history, expecting the end of time in the midst of time, then they can become profoundly dangerous. For there is then nothing to check their descent into fantasy, paranoia and violence.
We need a vigorous, challenging dialogue between religion and science on the massive problems confronting humanity. Each needs the other if it is to avoid hubris and intellectual imperialism. Bad things happen when religion creates devastation and cruelty on earth for the sake of salvation in heaven. And bad things happen when science declares itself the last word on the human condition and engages in social or bioengineering, treating human beings as objects.
Science deals with only a part of life, not the whole of it. The portion of its competence is very important and the continued development of its capabilities is vital. But let us not forget that it is only one part of life we are considering. Science can help us stay alive, live healthier and more comfortable existences. It cannot help us when we ask why we should live at all. It can help us create that which is good, when we know why we want the good, and why it is good. It takes a very great scientist to recognize the limitations of science. Albert Einstein once wrote: “He, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. His eyes are closed.”
Consider the matter of love, both in its romantic as well as its mature expression. Science can describe some anatomical structures that are involved in the experience of love. But when a moth- er holds her child in her arms and feels a glory that even the poet cannot adequately describe, science is not involved. There are basic human questions that lie outside of the realm of science: Why do we suffer and why do we die? Is life worth living? Why should we do good rather than evil? In these matters science is largely irrelevant.
Opponents of religion are surprised and dismayed that, in the face of what seems obvious, religions continue to grow and flourish in every part of the world, except Europe. Far from disappearing, in America there are megachurches with congregations in the tens of thousands. In China today, there are more practicing Christians than members of the Communist Party and almost as many Muslims as there are in Saudi Arabia. In Russia, where religion was exiled for almost a century, a majority of the population still believe in God.
Why is this so? Because religion does what none of the great institutions of contemporary society can do. Not politics, not economics, not science and not technology. It tries to answer the great questions that any reflective human being will ask: Who am I? (The question of identity.) Why am I here? (The question of purpose.) And: How then shall I live? (The question of ethics and meaning.)
In his challenging and closely-argued book, “The Demon-Haunted World”, Carl Sagan compares science and religion: “Many religions — devoted to reverence, awe, ethics, ritual, community, f amily, charity, and political and economic justice — are in no way challenged, but rather uplifted, by the findings of science. There is no necessary conflict between science and religion. However, it is unfortunate that those religious groups sometimes called conser- vative or fundamentalist seem to be on the ascendant and prominent in the media. They have chosen to make a stand on matters subject to disproof and thus have something to fear from science.”
In 2016 President Barack Obama visited Hiroshima and delivered a notable address in which he said: “Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos. But the same discoveries can be turned into even more efficient killing machines. The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological ‘progress’ without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires moral revolution as well.”
Here is a Jewish joke, a tragic one. The time, 1938, the place, a travel agency in Germany. A Jew has entered. He tells the woman at the desk that he would like to buy a ticket for a foreign journey. “Where to?” asks the travel agent.
“What are you offering” asks the would-be traveller. The travel agent passes him a globe. He turns the globe slowly, looking at country after country, knowing that each has closed its doors to people of his f aith. He pushes the globe back to the travel agent with the words: “Don’t you have another globe?”
Perhaps our world is not one we would have chosen, but it is the only globe we have. With thanks for its manifold gifts and blessings, we must nevertheless, struggle to overcome both human and natural disasters. Alas, this is our human condition.
Rabbi Bernard Baskin is Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Anshe Sholom in Hamilton and an occasional contributor to these pages.