by P.M.-A.M.
Having had the benefit of a classical education before training in the sciences, I am not ensconced in either of C.P. Snow's "Two Cultures," and have had to come to grips with the apparent conflicts between the humanities and the hard sciences. The way I handle these conflicts is to keep the world of physical facts and the world of personal values separate. Let me give two examples:
One of the political debates of our time is the issue of abortions: at what stage should a fetus or a baby first come under the protection of the community? Many of the debaters make scientific arguments on when a fetus first has its personhood defined by its DNA, or on when a fetus first becomes medically viable. But science does not tell us that either personhood or else viability earns protection from destruction: it is our value system that tells us whom to protect, and the debate should be about our values, not about the biology. Different cultures may protect entirely different classes of people or animals, and we need to decide which values are ours.
Another example is the teaching of evolution. On the one hand, scientist strongly believe that evolutionary concepts are necessary for an understanding of biology. On the other hand, a few religious leaders feel that teaching evolution is an attack on the special status of mankind. In my mind, and in the minds of most Christians, the facts of evolution, and the value we place on the sanctity of human life, are not in conflict. We accepted the laws of classical physics in astronomy hundreds of years ago; in religious terms, we cast God in the role of the watchmaker, ruling us through His laws of physics, rather than seeing Him as a daily meddler who pushes the sun through the sky as His whim strikes Him. If we accept God as the one who created the watch, we should have no problem with a Creator who works through biological processes, rather than arbitrary interventions.
These debates are complicated by our view of truth, both scientific truth and religious truth; we need to examine both, in order to understand our own value system.
When I was a sophomore at Caltech, I occasionally got drawn into discussions on "is there such a thing as absolute truth." These debates were never resolved, because in science we actually don't ever deal with absolute truth.
In science, we postulate hypotheses, which are stabs at the truth, and then try to confirm or reject them through experiments and observations. If a hypothesis is verified by this testing, it becomes a full-fledged theory like Newton's law, and provides a mathematical model for predicting physical events.
What we must understand is that no law of physics is ever final; it is merely a working model that we use until it fails. Newton's law provides great governing equations for designing mechanisms on earth, but on an astrophysical scale of velocities approaching the speed of light, it becomes inaccurate, and needs to be augmented by Einstein's special relativity. Every theory will presumably become inadequate as we acquire more knowledge and precision; statisticians tell us that every hypothesis is likely to be rejected as we do more and more tests. Does this mean that we should not take our current theories seriously? Not at all: until we learn more, we should act "as if" the current theories were true, to borrow the German phrase "als ob" from the philosopher Vaihinger.
This state of affairs is highlighted by the fact that, in atomic theory, we sometimes use different theories that superficially appear to be contradictory, but which serve us well for looking at particular processes. We may represent certain subatomic entities as particles at one time, and as electromagnetic waves at another: light may be treated as photons or as light-waves, depending on what we are trying to analyze. Perhaps someday we will have a uniform model which covers all the phenomena which we observe; in the meantime, we use the equations which we have as if they were true, and accomplish our work successfully.
The idea that "truth is what works" is not entirely satisfying. Many research scientists like to think that there is an underlying absolute truth to which they can get closer and closer, and perhaps reach it in their lifetime. Others are resigned to the idea that human limitations will never allow us to know it all. In the end, it does not matter whether there is an absolute truth within our reach: all that matters is that we use the understanding that we have, and forever try to improve on it.
Religious truth does not interfere with scientific facts, because it concerns itself not with physical observations of "what is," but with values or "what we should do." Values are transmitted through commandments, living and historical examples, legends, parables and myths; these serve the same functions in religion that theories and models carry out in science. They are "true" because they help us to understand ourselves, define our values, and govern our conduct.
We need to be careful with the word "myth" because it is often used as a pejorative for the parables of foreign religions; our own myths we call "the word of God." If we can accept the fact that there may be inspired writings in other cultures, not only in our own, we can examine other traditions dispassionately. The test of a myth is whether it works in guiding our lives in a way that meets our needs as individuals, as families, and as communities.
The Old Testament derives its power from the many inspired writers that contributed to it over hundreds of years on the one hand, and on the other hand from the winnowing process that selected the books that the community found most valuable, helpful, and true. The community read many additional inspired writings; if we added the surviving pseudepigrapha (see Chatsworth's translations) that were not included in the canon because they were not quite as helpful and true, our sacred scriptures would be about three times as voluminous!
What sacred writings focus on is not just history, but an understanding of our nature and our community as humans. The test of the validity of our religious sources lies in our lives, not in scientific analysis of the writings. It is the example of our lives that inspires others to live "as if" our parables and myths were true, not the debate about the merit of our scriptures as literature or history.
Ultimately, the nature God is a mystery to us; seeing him only "in a dark mirror" forces us to act as if our partial knowledge were true. Again, the idea that "truth is what works" is not entirely satisfying. We like to think that the underlying absolute truth is within our reach, but I believe that human limitations will never allow me to know it all. What matters is that we use the understanding that we have, and forever try to improve on it.
Does our lack of certainty about the underlying absolute truth mean that we should not take our current parables and myths seriously? Not at all: until we learn more, they are the best guide that we have, and we should use them because they are working for us. The social sciences would like to replace our parable-based understanding with the value-free language of the soft sciences, but at some point the human challenge demands values. What are some of those values?
Several religions that have succeeded in meeting human needs center on the concept of one God for all of humankind. We don't exactly know how to describe that God except in abstractions and/or similes: the Creator, and/or a loving Father, and/or an omnipotent force, and so on. However, the impact of monotheism on our values is very clear: it says that all of humankind answers to the same divine principles. We are not separate tribes which each have different protectors in the sky, or separate households with individual Lares and Penates, but we are all part of the same creation. For example, in Christianity, this is emphasized by the mandate to care for all people: one early writer was amazed by the fact that the Christians not only took care of their families (as was the custom in Rome), and not only tithed for the widows and orphans of their own community (as was the custom among the Jews), but also extended their charity to total strangers, even to unwanted infants abandoned to death by exposure.
Occasionally, a monotheistic society may temporarily revert to tribalism. The dictates of the Torah united the twelve tribes, but there were times in history when the kingdoms split, or when Essene rigorists segregated themselves from the Sadducee establishment. The mandates the New Testament brought the Gospel to all humankind, but there followed major schisms, violent reformations, and contentious sectarianism. The instructions of the Koran brought about unifications across the boundaries of warring tribes, and recognition of commonalities with other people of the Bible, but we also see of Islamo-fascist splinter groups. Yet, inspired by concern for our entire family of humankind, caring thinkers continue to rise above these setbacks, and to promote the unifying values represented by monotheism.
Science does not tell us whether concern for mankind should trump our individual or tribal interests, our value system does. Indeed, there are societies and individuals who do not share our values: whether our values are better is not measured by any scientific parameter, but by our own serenity and peace of mind.
One of the great debates of early Christianity was about the nature of Jesus: should we think of him as "a son of God," a man inspired by God; or as "the Son of Man," God come to earth in human form, perhaps even only of human appearance. The former view was thought to diminish the divine message because God would then not be speaking to us directly; the last was thought to diminish His sacrifice, because the human suffering of Jesus would then be only a spectral image. The mainstream decision was that we should think of him as true God and true man.
That decision did not end the debate: are God and man separate entities within Jesus; or are they truly unified in Jesus? The latter view was thought by many as demeaning to God, and yet that view was taken by mainstream Christianity. Why does that matter?
If we regard our spiritual nature and the world in which our body lives as separate, we will conclude that the spiritual world is superior. As Ronald Knox illustrates in his magnum opus "Enthusiasm," this tends to lead us either into extreme rigorist practices in order to subdue our physical nature, or else into antinomian detachment from the physical world of responsibility to our fellow man. The mainstream Christian view is that the supernatural and the natural are closely coupled, and our spirituality and our actions must develop in harmony.
You may agree or disagree with these viewpoints of the early Christians, but you can see in this example how our beliefs are tied to our value system.
Less than two-hundred years ago, in response to the overly rationalized view of Christianity by prominent writers, the idea of the literal interpretation of the Bible was introduced, replacing the traditional idea that the Bible should be read with a view towards receiving the spiritual message or "kerygma." The danger with literal readings of particular translations is that we may be tempted to use the religious text to learn whether the earth is flat or round; whether the sun revolves around us, at the center of the universe; how old the earth is, and so on. In my view, the Bible does not exist to explain astronomy and science, but to tell us how to lead our lives.
Noted scientists have proposed that science and religion are converging in the latest cosmological theories. In my view, science only tells us what is and what we can do, not what we should do. The inspiration and experience of thousands of years is a better guide to values which give meaning to our lives.