Part 2: Science vs. Faith, Religion and Belief

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Please read my first blog on this subject, Part 1, in which I explain the fundamental connection between science, faith, religion and belief.

science-vs-faith-religion-and-belief.html

What do this and my previous blog have to do with time? Quite simply time is often at the center of disputes between religion and science. The scientific discovery that the Earth was billions of years old and humans millions of years old upset the accepted religious understanding as interpreted from the Bible, for example. At the same time religion often spoke/speaks of a supreme being who lived in a world independent of time or spoke about immortal gods or spiritual realms outside of time -- concepts which scientists often dismissed.

Religion and science go together. As I've said before, science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind. They are interdependent and have a common goal -- the search for truth. Hence it is absurd for religion to proscribe Galileo or Darwin or other scientists. And it is equally absurd when scientists say that there is no God. The real scientist has faith, which does not mean that he must subscribe to a creed. Without religion there is no charity. 
Albert Einstein

It is also important to remember that the classic battle between science and religion, i.e., the arrest and imprisonment of Galileo by the Catholic Church was not religion vs. science but rather a battle between two different scientific theories. Yet this battle seemed to set the stage for today's conflicts between religion and science, such as those involving human evolution and the Big Bang Theory.

The Earth centered, geocentric, system held that the Earth was at the center of the Universe. Refined by Ptolemy it was quite accurate.  (Wikimedia.org)

Galileo promoted the new idea that the Earth revolved around the Sun while the Catholic Church held with the earlier scientific theory that the Earth was at the center of the solar system, known as geocentric. The older theory had been in place for about two thousand years; in addition, over the centuries, this Earth centered system had been refined to be quite precise with the Ptolemaic model. It was not nonsense (as some modern commentators have stated) but good science in that it explained the movement of the sun, moon and planets very well up to a point. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model

And while not widely known, the geocentric system is still useful and used today under various circumstances:

The geocentric (Ptolemaic) model of the solar system is still of interest to planetarium makers, as, for technical reasons, a Ptolemaic-type motion for the planet light apparatus has some advantages over a Copernican-type motion. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model

Zeiss Planetarium Projector in Montreal. (Wikimedia.org)

It is also used by NASA when it makes some calculations easier. 

NASA uses the Geocentric Solar Ecliptic (GSE) system for some applications. The GSE is now the preferred system for depicting vector quantities in some space physics situations. (Wikimedia.org)  

The conflict between science and religion is often one of older ideas or an old science vs. new concepts. Ideas once held by religion such as lightning bolts being thrown by an angry god have been replaced by a scientific understanding of electricity in the atmosphere. Few people would argue with this today. As a result some ideas in religion need to give way to well established scientific understandings.

It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.
Albert Einstein

Science, on the other hand, needs to acknowledge that it cannot know everything. There is a limit -- as I have suggested in my earlier blog. Science, for example, relies on its ability to measure. Measurement is at the heart of the scientific method. Yet there are things, critical things, that cannot be measured.

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so. 
Galileo Galilei 

Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted. 
Albert Einstein  

 I do not believe that science can explain, for example, why there is such wide ranging diversity in the Universe if the Universe is solely governed by predictable laws.

Every snowflake, every person, every galaxy is unique. If this were simply a scientific world of laws of cause and effect, then it would also be a cookie cutter world of duplicate people and galaxies -- a Universe of clones. Yet it is our uniqueness that science cannot explain, which is essential to life and a fundamental mystery.

Snow crystals photographed by William Bentley (wikimedia.org). While subatomic particles, the building blocks of nature, are exactly alike, and water molecules are, for the most part, exactly alike, every snow crystal is different. "The water molecules in an ice crystal form a hexagonal lattice..." "it is indeed extremely unlikely that two complex snowflakes will look exactly alike"  http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals

And there is more. The diversity in the Universe is a delicate balance. Too much diversity would cause galaxies to shred apart and many people would be born with three eyes. It appears that the Universe has just the right mix of predictable laws along with a sprinkle of diversity that seems to defy those laws.

We know with nature, in particular, that diversity is a survival strategy. Diversity gives a species the advantage of responding differently to changing environmental conditions, for example.  

Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

This principle of change or movement prevents nature from ever really repeating herself... 
The History of Scientific Ideas, Charles Singer 

Even something as simple as green seaweed as seen through the natural mosaic of endlessly diverse water surface ripples shows the infinite variations created by nature.  (Wikimedia.org)

The soul given to each of us is moved by the same living spirit that moves the universe. 
Albert Einstein

This idea was also expressed by the poet/painter/photographer who went by the name of Wols. In 1944 when looking out at the Mediterranean at Cassis, France, he wrote:

... eternity
in the little waves of the harbor
which are always the same without being the same...
All loves lead to one love, and
beyond all personal loves,
there is the nameless love,
the great mystery,
the Absolute,
X
Tao
God
the cosmos ...

Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang 
Schulze)  Watercolors, Drawings, Writings by Wols

 (Wikimedia.org)

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour.

William Blake

Electron microscope photograph of an "antenna of common wasp, Vespula vulgaris" magnified 3000 times. Scale is about 30 micrometers or about 1/1000 of an inch. (wikimedia.org)

The Millennium Simulation, an extremely sophisticated computer simulation of the large structure of the cosmos -- showing the filaments that the Universe is made of -- is a "model... of the Universe in a cube over 2 billion light years on a side, holding 20 million galaxies." (wikimedia.org)

See a full video of the structure of the Universe, the largest detailed structure ever visualized by humans based on scientific data put together by the 
Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics.   

http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/data_vis/

Science vs. Faith, Religion and Belief

Get the free 2-year set of blogs from DeconstructingTime in a PDF eBook. 
Click now to view a PDF version online and/or to download the PDF file.

See Part 2 of this blog at:

http://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/2013/10/part-2-science-vs-faith-religion-and.html

Scientists often scoff at what they call 'primitive belief systems' such as those with medicine men and shamans. Yet the roots of science come from the same  fundamental human impulses that formed these beliefs.

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. 
Albert Einstein

For example, history of science professors James E. McClellan and Harold Dorn wrote, “In the case of Neolithic astronomy, we are dealing not with the prehistory of science, but with science in prehistory.”

And going back even further to animistic beliefs, the roots of science are still visible. 

"Animism" is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples' "spiritual" or "supernatural" perspectives.Animism encompasses the belief that there is no separation between the spiritual and physical (or material) world, and souls or spirits exist, not only in humans, but also in some other animals, plants, rocks, geographic features such as mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment, including thunder, wind, and shadows.
Wikipedia

The return of the Pleiades every year was a major event in many cultures as it often marked the beginning of the rainy season and for some was the beginning of the new year. Since there was a distinct seasonal change when it appeared, it was also given godlike powers and treated with reverence in many religions. According to Wikipedia, the Pleiades was known to "the Maori, Aboriginal Australians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Maya, the Aztec, and the Sioux and Cherokee." as well at the Greeks. When the Pleiades first appeared in the night sky -- which lasted only a few minutes at the beginning of its annual reappearance -- indigenous tribes often greeted it with wild celebrations. Yet their ability to mark time was sophisticated enough that they knew exactly when to look for the Pleiades -- even though appeared over the horizon very briefly at first. (Wikimedia.org)

 (Wikimedia.org)

The time of the rains was announced to the Hottentots by the rising Pleiades, whose reappearance was hailed at the annual festival. The first missionary to the Khoi-Khoi, George Schmidt, (1737), relates that, 'At the return of the Pleiades these natives celebrate an anniversary; as soon as these stars appear above the eastern horizon, mothers will lift their little ones on their arms, and running up to elevated spots will show to them those friendly stars, and teach them to stretch their little hands towards them. The people of a kraal will assemble to dance and sing according to the old customs of their ancestors. The chorus always sings, "O Tiqua! our father above our heads, give rain to us, that the fruits (bulbs, etc.), may ripen, and that we may have plenty of food and a good year."' 

masseiana.org

It is now believed that the 1600 BCE Bronze Age Nebra Sky disk, with pictures of the sun, moon and Pleiades was used astronomically to determine the fall and spring solstices and also had religious importance. (Wikimedia.org)

An essential part of many animistic religions was the role of the shaman. 

Shamanism among Eskimo peoples refers to those aspects of the Eskimo cultures that are related to the shamans’ role as a mediator between people and spirits, souls, and mythological beings. Most Eskimo groups had such a mediator function, and the person fulfilling the role was believed to be able to command helping spirits, ask mythological beings to ... enable the success of the hunt, or heal sick people by bringing back their "stolen" souls.
Wikipedia

The above definition of the role of the shaman is not unlike the Greek hero: 

In Greek mythology heroes are regarded as mediators between gods and mortals...
presentationsistersunion.org

Tylor, the anthropologist who coined the term animistic, was quite condescending:

Tylor believed that animistic beliefs were "childish" and typical of "cognitive underdevelopment", and that it was therefore common in "primitive" peoples such as those living in hunter gatherer societies.
Wikipedia

And what does all this have to do with science? Well, it's really quite simple, but hard to see from our modern technological and scientific perspective: 

In the beliefs of all cultures 

-- from the most 'primitive' to the most modern -- 

across the globe, there was/is an underlying uniquely human logic: 

There are forces outside of human beings 

which can be known 

and once known can be influenced.

This idea is so much a part of us and our cultures that we take it for granted. And more than that, we are still driven to better understand these outside forces and to learn how these forces can be tamed or used to our benefit.

This idea is at the heart of science. Rather getting the help of a shaman or making offerings to gods and goddesses, with science we now look for laws of nature which once understood can often be controlled or harnessed for our own good. But the basic impulse is the same.

And BTW just how far removed is science from previous ideas about gods and goddesses? 

Commenting on the Western fascination with technology and science, Dr. Eugen Weber in his conclusion of the entire history of the West (52 1/2 hour lectures) pointed out the importance of Greek mythological ideas which led to today's obsession with modern technology. Weber believed that modern science is, in a sense, stealing fire from the gods and putting this power that the gods formerly controlled into our own hands.

Really when you think about it, our patron saint is Prometheus who stole fire from the gods.
Eugen Weber
Professor of History, UCLA
Public Television Series
The Western Tradition

However, science was designed to answer some questions but not others. 

Science, natural philosophy, proceeds on the information given by the senses. This line of its attack is thus limited and we cannot hope that anything but limited objectives can be reached. Science does not profess to solve ultimate problems. On the other had it does seek to solve its limited problems with a known degree of accuracy and a known margin of error.
Charles Singer
A History of Scientific Ideas

There are many things beyond our understanding -- and always will  be beyond our understanding -- which is the realm of religion. And yet there are things that we now do understand -- such a earthquakes, storms and disease -- that used to be part of religion. Nevertheless science will always be limited and religion will always speak to that part of our soul that craves a connection to a huge universe that fills the sky  with hundreds of billions of galaxies that contain hundreds of billions of stars.

It is also important to note that the father of the Big Bang theory was a Catholic Priest,  Georges Lemaître -- so a religious view point led directly to our modern understanding of the creation of the Universe.

Lemaître explored the logical consequences of an expanding universe and boldly proposed that it must have originated at a finite point in time. If the universe is expanding, he reasoned, it was smaller in the past, and extrapolation back in time should lead to an epoch when all the matter in the universe was packed together in an extremely dense state. ...Lemaître argued that the physical universe was initially a single particle -- the “primeval atom” as he called it -- which disintegrated in an explosion, giving rise to space and time and the expansion of the universe that continues to this day. 
www.amnh.org

In 1931 Georges Lemaître, a Catholic Priest, was the first to propose that the Universe began with the Big Bang. (Wikimedia.org)

In a recent article in the New York Times, a scientist, Adam Frank, bemoaned the fact that the truths of science such as evolution theory were not more widely accepted:
"This is not a world the scientists I trained with would recognize. Many of them served on the Manhattan Project. Afterward, they helped create the technologies that drove America’s postwar prosperity." Yet as we know, the Manhattan project brought us the ever present threat of nuclear war as well as nuclear reactor accidents  -- so perhaps a blind faith in science is not always a good idea.

Science and the institutions of science should not become a kind of unquestionable priesthood that is as inflexible as the Catholic church of the 1600s that tried and imprisoned Galileo.
Charles Singer
A History of Scientific Ideas

Knowledge for knowledge sake has created an imbalance in our worldview. Human knowledge should progress evenly on all fronts. When our understanding of the physical universe far surpasses our understanding of ourselves a great disequilibrium occurs. It isn't as though we don't need to know all this stuff. It is simply that there are other things we need to know in order to make sense out of all this physical knowledge we have gathered. 
Dr. John M. Artz 

 (Wikimedia.org)

As you look through the veil of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy to our companion galaxy, Andromeda -- with its billions of stars aligned in a majestic order -- it is hard to not believe in something much greater than ourselves. If you ever get a chance, look at it through a telescope. It will take your breath away.

A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.
Carl Sagan