Mr. Moderate

Implicit in any battle between evolution supporters and opponents is the conflict between the sides as to whether or not science intrudes into the religious Magisterium. The late Dr. Stephen J. Gould propounded his view that science and religion occupied nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA), leading to this oft-quoted observation by Dr. Gould:

The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for starters, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty). To cite the arch clichés, we get the age of rocks, and religion retains the rock of ages; we study how the heavens go, and they determine how to go to heaven.

When it comes to the science of evolution, as early as 1922, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science had this to say:

The Council of the Association affirms that, so far as the scientific evidences of evolution of plants and animals and man are concerned, there is no ground whatever for the assertion that these evidences constitute a “mere guess.” No scientific generalization is more strongly supported by thoroughly tested evidences than is that of organic evolution.

In other words, within the Magisterium of scientific inquiry, nothing “is more strongly supported by thoroughly tested evidences than is that of organic evolution.” Thus, to reject evolution is to reject the very foundations of modern science; it is to deny, on grounds of religious belief, the entire Magisterium of science!

On the other hand, the opponents of the idea of evolution view it as an atheistic religious idea that therefore intrudes into the Magisterium of religious thought:

Those who are endeavoring to achieve a more balanced presentation of origins (and a less dogmatic teaching of atheistic evolution) can attest to the fact that the controversy is not over the humanists trying to present a balanced view and the Christians a one-sided view, but more often the humanists wanting to indoctrinate students in their point of view only, and the creationists wanting a fair hearing (Shortt, 2004). This censorship and viewpoint discrimination occurs at all levels of public education, from elementary through college (Black, 2004).

Perhaps we would do well to step back a bit from this battle over evolution and review a similar battle from several centuries ago concerning Galileo and the idea that the Earth revolved around the sun. To avoid accusations of slandering the Catholic Church, I will take as my canonical text on this affair the on-line article by George Sim Johnston. The key quote is probably these two paragraphs:

What John Paul II wanted was a better understanding of the whole affair by both scientists and theologians. It has been said that while politicians think in terms of weeks and statesmen in years, the Pope thinks in centuries. The Holy Father was trying to heal the tragic split between faith and science which occurred in the 17th century and from which Western culture has not recovered. Following the guidelines of the Second Vatican Council, he wished to make clear that science has a legitimate freedom in its own sphere and that this freedom was unduly violated by Church authorities in the case of Galileo.

But at the same time–and here the secular media tuned out–the Holy Father pointed out that “the Galileo case has been a sort of ‘myth,’ in which the image fabricated out of the events was quite far removed from the reality. In this perspective, the Galileo case was the symbol of the Church’s supposed rejection of scientific progress.” Galileo’s run-in with the Church, according to the Pope, involved a “tragic mutual incomprehension” in which both sides were at fault. It was a conflict that ought never to have occurred, because faith and science, properly understood, can never be at odds.

According to that writer, what actually happened during this whole affair was a dramatic change in the paradigm of scientific inquiry. Prior to the writings of Copernicus, science was viewed as a sort-of mathematical toy:

To the Greek and medieval mind, science was a kind of formalism, a means of coordinating data, which had no bearing on the ultimate reality of things. Different mathematical devices–such as the Ptolemaic cycles–could be advanced to predict the movements of the planets, and it was of no concern to the medieval astronomer whether such devices touched on the actual physical truth. The point was to give order to complicated data, and all that mattered was which hypothesis (a key word in the Galileo affair) was the simplest and most convenient.

Thus, we get to the actual Copernican Revolution:

But in reality Copernicus’s book marked a sea change in human thought, one that caught the universities even more off guard than the Church. Owen Barfield, in his fascinating book Saving the Appearances, calls it “the real turning-point” in the history of science: “It took place when Copernicus (probably–it cannot be regarded as certain) began to think, and others, like Kepler and Galileo, began to affirm that the heliocentric hypothesis not only saved the appearances, but was physically true …. It was not simply a new theory of the nature of celestial movements that was feared, but a new theory of the nature of theory; namely, that, if a hypothesis saves all the appearances, it is identical with truth.”

But even the idea that science could produce “truth” outside of the control of the church authorities was not, in and of itself, threatening to the church hierarchy. Galileo got in trouble for crossing the boundary and intruding into the Magisterium of the church:

But in 1616, the year of Galileo’s first “trial,” there was precious little elasticity in Catholic biblical theology. The Church had just been through the bruising battles of the Reformation. One of the chief quarrels with the Protestants was over the private interpretation of Scripture. Catholic theologians were in no mood to entertain hermeneutical injunctions from a layman like Galileo. His friend Archbishop Piero Dini warned him that he could write freely so long as he “kept out of the sacristy.” But Galileo threw caution to the winds, and it was on this point–his apparent trespassing on the theologians’ turf–that his enemies were finally able to nail him.

So, the Roman Catholic Church has made peace with the idea that science is its own Magisterium that produces its own truth, even if it isn’t particularly comfortable with some of the truth produced by scientific inquiry. Unfortunately, the atheists are not willing to let things remain in that state of peace. Almost immediately after the publication of Gould’s ideas (above), the atheists reacted, with this being a sample:

It is sad to see someone who, without question, has contributed much to science, now promulgating such patent nonsense. Gould cannot even himself stick to his NOMA theory — whenever he reveals an ethical judgment of his own, it turns out to be informed by his scientific and historical knowledge of the real world. Far from having a “professional expertise” in the area of morals and ethics, religion has, as Gould himself admits, shown itself to be quite capable of taking actions that are now judged to have been plainly evil, when it was entrusted with secular power (and he need not have limited himself to mediaeval Christian and old-Testament Judaic history — theocracy has been, and is to this day, notoriously unconcerned with human rights.)

The only epistemic differences that distinguish the religious “magisterium” are the special status demanded for “revelation” as absolute knowledge, thus shielding it from any empirical test; and the insistence on tolerance for wishful thinking and self deception in the name of the “comfort” of believers. Far from qualifying religion for status as a “magisterium” immune from scientific inquiry and criticism, such special pleading should, for all who value intellectual consistency and integrity, serve to impeach religion as a source of anything that would aspire to be called knowledge.

The difficulty for religion as a distinct magisterium is exactly that point: it depends upon preventing any empirical investigation of its claims. Thus, the more religion has to say about things that exist within the empirical world of science, the more religion will necessarily come into conflict with scientific inquiry. And all of the wishful thinking by the Pope and Dr. Gould cannot make that any different than it is.

The more science investigates the nature of conscious thought and the workings of the human brain, the less sense can be made of the religious idea of a human soul that invests itself into the human body at some inexplicable point of development. The Catholic Church exercises its great influence on humanity by postulating that each of us has an immortal soul and that said soul will be rewarded or punished in a future existence based upon what we do here on Earth during our lives. (Most other major religions have similar ideas.) My own mother took about seven years to die of Alzheimers Disease. During her last year of life, she did not resemble her own self in any meaningful way. So, if the idea of a soul is true, what version of my mother is transmitted into the afterlife? And just how is such a decision made, anyway? Each religion might have its own distinct answers. But how would any of them know the truth? In a universe as large as ours is, how can any human being hope to communicate with God, if God even exists? I know that I’ve never once spoken to God, and I doubt I would trust any person who told me that they had. After all, with people like Jim Jones and the Heaven’s Gate cult out there, aren’t most people who make such claims obviously insane?

Since Gutenberg invented the printing press, Western Civilization has become notorious for the voluminous amounts of records we keep. Given modern computer systems to organize those records, it becomes easy to ascertain facts about various things in a fairly short amount of time. As evidence accumulates about just how ill-advised it generally is to trust anybody who claims to have received a revelation of some sort, logical and scientific inquiry would seem to advise that all such revelations be taken with a fairly-large grain of salt. Once again, science intrudes into the Magisterium of religion.

At the end of the day, we are confronted with this question: if science is the only legitimate way of ascertaining the truth of any given occurrence, then how can we possibly continue to take the pronouncements of religious leaders as commandments to be obeyed? Increasingly, human behavior falls into the Magisterium of scientific inquiry. And we know from history that religion has no good weapon to use against science other than to invoke totalitarian forms of oppression. So, if it comes down to yet-another dog fight between science and religion, my bet goes on science.