How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [81]
THE REAL MEANING OF ARGUMENTS FOR GOD
All of this emphasis on proving God’s existence is as if to say: “See, modern science supports what we have been saying all along—there really is something unique and special about the Bible.” Is there? There is. The Bible is one of the greatest works of literature in the history of Western thought. It is a book of myth and meaning, moral homilies and ethical dilemmas, poetry and prose. Few works have been so influential to so many people over so many millennia. In an epilogue Drosnin admits: “I’m not religious. I don’t even believe in God.” It shows. Drosnin, like the creationists, has taken a beautiful book of literature and ruined it by trying to turn it into a book of science.
Science and religion are, at present, largely separate spheres of knowledge divided by, more than anything else, a difference in methodologies. Science is a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection or confirmation; its “truths” are provisional, fluid, and changing. Religion is the affirmation of a set of beliefs aimed at providing morals and meaning; its truths are final, confirmed by faith. Because we live in the Age of Science and no longer the Age of Faith, temptations abound to use science to bolster faith. Such attempts at reconciling science and religion always fail for the fundamental reason that religion ultimately depends on faith. The whole point of faith, in fact, is to believe regardless of the evidence, which is the very antithesis of science. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (II Corinthians 5:7). “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29).
William Jennings Bryan ended his famous “Address to the Jury in the Scopes’ Case” (published posthumously as it was never delivered during the trial and he died two days later), after pages of text marshalling the evidence for God and against evolution, with a plea to “sing that old song of triumph,” faith:
Faith of our fathers! living still
In spite of dungeon, fire, and sword!
O, how our hearts beat high with joy,
Whene’er we hear that glorious word:
Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death.
O, ye of little faith. Why do you need science to prove God? You do not. These scientific proofs of God are not only an insult to science; to those who are deeply religious they are an insult to God.
Part II
RELIGION AND SCIENCE
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, III, 1794
The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
Chapter 6
IN A MIRROR DIMLY, THEN FACE TO FACE
Faith, Reason, and the Relationship of Religion and Science
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully.
—I Corinthians 13:12
There is a certain predictable, expected pleasure in making a discovery that comes at the end of a long and ordered journey, especially when that discovery is the goal of the trek itself. Discoveries made by accident, with no jaunt planned or purpose in mind, also generate their own unique pleasures, reserved for those rare occasions when contingent sequences include us in their wanderings. As a minimalist example of the latter, I once encountered the following coincidence at the home of a friend. During a quiet moment alone I grabbed for the nearest piece of reading material and happened to pull down a 1954 edition of The Story of the Starry Universe, part of the Popular Science Library’s series of illustrated books of science for the general reader. Flipping to the final page to see what prognostications were being made for the future, I read that V-2 rockets were being hurled into space with scientific instruments (instead