Sunday reflection 11th August 2019
In the present age when some - not all - religious believers are quick to disavow any scientific view that they find inconvenient and the more aggressive atheists are prone to claim that science is on their side, it is easy to see science and religion as opposed.
This is not the only possible view and indeed, for most of the history of science the two were aligned, with religions leaders strongly encouraging the search for scientific knowledge and many of the greatest scientific minds in history, such as Isaac Newton, also being religious believers.
While there have been obvious cases of genuine clashes between science and religion - the Catholic church's battle with Galileo, for instance, or the initial reaction of many religious believers to the theory of evolution - those who seek to present religion and science as opposed have grossly oversimplified some real events such as the murder of Hypatia and completely distorted others.
The classic example of a myth presenting religion as anti-science which is the complete reverse of the truth is the popular idea that the church opposed Columbus's expedition because they thought the earth was flat.
This is completely wrong. Both sides in that disagreement knew perfectly well that the earth is roughly spherical in shape. The disagreement between Christopher Columbus and the panel of experts, some of them clerics, who King Ferdinand appointed to review the proposal for an expedition was not about the shape of the planet but about how big a sphere it is - and furthermore, on this point, they were right and Columbus was wrong.
Columbus had underestimated the size of the world, and therefore the distance he had to sail to reach India by sailing West from Europe. Those who opposed his expedition did so not because they were anti-science and thought the world flat but because their science was better than his: their idea of the size of the world was much closer to being accurate and they had correctly calculated that the ships available to him in 1492 did not have the range to reach India that way.
Fortunately for Columbus what neither side knew was that there were a couple of continents in the way, which his ships did have the range to reach. When he found them, he mistakenly imagined that he had arrived in the vicinity of India, which is why the archipelago where he made landfall in the Americas is known by the grossly misleading title of the "West Indies" to this day.
At St James' church Whitehaven the Reverend Alison Riley preached a sermon this morning in which she included a quote from Albert Einstein.
I have learned the hard way to check any quote attributed to Einstein as he never said at least three quarters of the things attributed to him, but this quote is an accurate one. In Einstein’s essay “Science and religion,” published in 1954. he wrote
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
Einstein, like his work, was a fantastically complex man and he said things which, taken out of context appear to be on both sides of the atheist/religious divide.
One thing which he was quite clear about, however, was that it made him angry when crusaders for either any conventional religion or for militant atheism claimed him as a supporter
One of Britain's leading experts on Einstein, John Brooke of Oxford University, has written that the great scientist's position on God has been widely misrepresented by people on both sides of the atheism/religion divide but he always resisted easy stereotyping on the subject.
"Like other great scientists he does not fit the boxes in which popular polemicists like to pigeonhole him," said Brooke.
"It is clear for example that he had respect for the religious values enshrined within Judaic and Christian traditions ... but what he understood by religion was something far more subtle than what is usually meant by the word in popular discussion."
Despite his categorical rejection of conventional religion, Brooke said that Einstein became angry when his views were appropriated by evangelists for atheism. He was offended by their lack of humility and once wrote. "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
The point I am making by quoting Einstein is not that science provides an argument for Christianity, Judaism or any other religion. He would have objected to his statement being used in that way. However, both the scientist and the person of faith can and should be, in their different ways, seekers after truth. And those who genuinely seek after truth do not have to be opponents.
In that sense, to imagine that faith and science must always be on opposite sites is to weaken both.
This is not the only possible view and indeed, for most of the history of science the two were aligned, with religions leaders strongly encouraging the search for scientific knowledge and many of the greatest scientific minds in history, such as Isaac Newton, also being religious believers.
While there have been obvious cases of genuine clashes between science and religion - the Catholic church's battle with Galileo, for instance, or the initial reaction of many religious believers to the theory of evolution - those who seek to present religion and science as opposed have grossly oversimplified some real events such as the murder of Hypatia and completely distorted others.
The classic example of a myth presenting religion as anti-science which is the complete reverse of the truth is the popular idea that the church opposed Columbus's expedition because they thought the earth was flat.
This is completely wrong. Both sides in that disagreement knew perfectly well that the earth is roughly spherical in shape. The disagreement between Christopher Columbus and the panel of experts, some of them clerics, who King Ferdinand appointed to review the proposal for an expedition was not about the shape of the planet but about how big a sphere it is - and furthermore, on this point, they were right and Columbus was wrong.
Columbus had underestimated the size of the world, and therefore the distance he had to sail to reach India by sailing West from Europe. Those who opposed his expedition did so not because they were anti-science and thought the world flat but because their science was better than his: their idea of the size of the world was much closer to being accurate and they had correctly calculated that the ships available to him in 1492 did not have the range to reach India that way.
Fortunately for Columbus what neither side knew was that there were a couple of continents in the way, which his ships did have the range to reach. When he found them, he mistakenly imagined that he had arrived in the vicinity of India, which is why the archipelago where he made landfall in the Americas is known by the grossly misleading title of the "West Indies" to this day.
At St James' church Whitehaven the Reverend Alison Riley preached a sermon this morning in which she included a quote from Albert Einstein.
I have learned the hard way to check any quote attributed to Einstein as he never said at least three quarters of the things attributed to him, but this quote is an accurate one. In Einstein’s essay “Science and religion,” published in 1954. he wrote
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
Einstein, like his work, was a fantastically complex man and he said things which, taken out of context appear to be on both sides of the atheist/religious divide.
One thing which he was quite clear about, however, was that it made him angry when crusaders for either any conventional religion or for militant atheism claimed him as a supporter
One of Britain's leading experts on Einstein, John Brooke of Oxford University, has written that the great scientist's position on God has been widely misrepresented by people on both sides of the atheism/religion divide but he always resisted easy stereotyping on the subject.
"Like other great scientists he does not fit the boxes in which popular polemicists like to pigeonhole him," said Brooke.
"It is clear for example that he had respect for the religious values enshrined within Judaic and Christian traditions ... but what he understood by religion was something far more subtle than what is usually meant by the word in popular discussion."
Despite his categorical rejection of conventional religion, Brooke said that Einstein became angry when his views were appropriated by evangelists for atheism. He was offended by their lack of humility and once wrote. "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
The point I am making by quoting Einstein is not that science provides an argument for Christianity, Judaism or any other religion. He would have objected to his statement being used in that way. However, both the scientist and the person of faith can and should be, in their different ways, seekers after truth. And those who genuinely seek after truth do not have to be opponents.
In that sense, to imagine that faith and science must always be on opposite sites is to weaken both.
Comments
God builds a tool which is evolution, its engine is natural selection, and evolution produces different types of life, where is the conflict?
The only time I do really get upset is when people use religion as a grounds to hurt or kill other people, that is the line. The obvious one that comes to mind in this day and age are people like ISIS or the Islamist terrorists.
To me its others too, take Jehovah's witnesses, I have no issue with them in general and if they refuse to take a life saving blood transfusion or transplant, then that is fine, your choice, more power to you I say. But, But and But again, you have no moral right to end the lives of your children on those grounds, no right at all.
At the end of the day being in favour of X should not mean people telling you that you automatically have to be opposed to Y, especially when the areas concerned are completely different, be it science, religion, culture or politics.
People, ad a lot of the issues concerned, are too complex to fit neatly into boxes and categories and the point John Brooks made about Einstein and Great scientists applies to many other people as well.