When I was a young child in Denver, Colorado, my parents took us down-town to the magnificent Gothic Episcopalian cathedral. I still remember its towering presence on the narrow, busy street as we approached. Inside, the immense vaulted ceiling and beautiful stained glass windows gave the solemnity of the service an unforgettable, magical quality. Even as a child I experienced, and now still remember, the contrast between the enchanted mysterious space of the Sunday service and the streets outside with their plain, angular, functional buildings and busy traffic.
We live in a secular age—or so it is often said. Yet the Cathedral maintains its commanding presence, even surrounded as it is by the functional aesthetics of science, technology, and commerce. On less tangible levels, debates about religion and its relationship to science still rage in our legislatures, school boards, on TV and radio shows, and doubtless in many dinner-table conversations across North America. Even when the topic doesn’t come up explicitly, it certainly remains part of our world.
What Does it Matter?
Everywhere we live with the tangible fruits of science and technology, and the tangible symbols of religious belief. What are the respective roles of science and religion in our lives? Are they conflicting, interrelated, or simply unrelated? Whether quietly or loudly, publicly or privately, consciously or subliminally, these questions persist in our culture, in our communities, and for many of us in our own minds.
That said, I don’t know anyone for whom the science/religion question is truly an “either/or” question. That is, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t believe in the discoveries of science; nor do I know anyone who truly doesn’t believe or feel that some spirit, intelligence, God, guiding purpose, or ultimate meaning has a hand in the existence of the universe, and of ourselves.
Such people on either far end of the spectrum of belief do exist, I know, but they aren’t many. Both belief systems simply are present in the mental and moral tapestry of our age, and therefore in our own minds—just as cathedrals persist side-by-side with technology-driven commerce in cities across North America. Anyone who is not wholly of one mind or the other has to find their own ways to accommodate what seem to be two inescapable, yet on the surface mutually contradictory, belief systems or world-views.
As fundamental and inescapable as that question is, however, I also don’t know anyone who agonizes over it. Except for a few philosophers, theologians, and scientists, we don’t even give it much thought as we go about our daily lives. What does it really matter, after all, when I go to work or look for a job, go shopping, have my morning coffee (as I am doing at this moment), or prepare dinner?
Well, I think it does matter. It matters a lot because we’re human, and humans act on what they believe. It’s what we do—the same way that trees grow toward the light or cats stalk birds. Other beings act and react according to their natures; we make choices according to what we believe, or what we know. We can’t help it; to believe (or think we know) things and to act on those beliefs truly is human nature. If our beliefs don’t seem to line up with our actions, then perhaps we don’t really believe what we think (or say) we believe.
What If….. ?
In retrospect, I think you have to agree, religion has at best a mixed historical record. It may counsel compassion, love, and oneness, but often in practice justifies bloody wars and oppressively intolerant regimes. Even today, as I’ll look at further in my next post, the most highly religious societies tend to be the poorest, the least tolerant, the least humane, and the least supportive of human rights.
On the other hand, science seems to offer no real day-to-day moral guidance at all. And however poorly the faithful live up to them, the great religious traditions do carry forward ancient (and ever more timely) guidelines for living with wisdom and compassion in the real day-to-day world.
Here are some further questions, however, that could only have been raised quite recently, that suggest how the conceptual/moral grounds under our feet may be changing. First, must we assume that the wisdom carried in the great traditions came down to us as decrees uttered by a Creator-God? Could the disconnected and authoritarian assumptions of such notions contradict the very messages, the actual effective wisdom, embodied in the tradition? And, might this contradiction in turn become worked into the foundations of institutionalized religion and help give rise to many of its ambiguities and problems?
But, what is the alternative? What we call religious or spiritual values are universal, and they came from somewhere. A possible answer might only now be coming available—through science. Rather than coming to us as decrees from on high, might instead the wisdom of connection, of oneness, of love, of the Golden Rule, have evolved with our humanness? Could it be something that we humans ourselves own—something, in the known universe, that is uniquely ours—and therefore for which we alone, uniquely, bear responsibility? (We can’t put if off on some higher being; we’re it!) And if so, what might this mean for how we act toward each other, toward other beings with whom we share the planet, and toward the Earth from which we come?
Such notions will be uncomfortable for many people—much as the realization that the Earth, rather than being the center of the universe is but a speck in an unimaginably vast cosmos, was uncomfortable to people when it was first proposed. It’s frightening, lonely, overwhelming given the vastness of the cosmos and the complexities of life, to suppose that we’re truly going it alone.
In another way, however
, that thought, that realization, can be quite empowering. As religious scholar, United Church Pastor, and self-described Christian atheist, Gretta Vosper says, “The way we live is more important than what we believe.”
Moreover, such a notion, while it doesn’t require a Creator God, doesn’t preclude one either. If there is such an omniscient consciousness to which we owe our being, then that entity created the conditions in which we evolved to be conscious ourselves, and in doing so put the responsibility for our existence—for how we live—in our own hands. Such ideas are not far from, can even serve as a bridge to, current religious thought informed by science.
I will continue to explore these questions further in upcoming posts, beginning next time with some relevant background findings and thoughts.
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