Cult of Dan Brown: Religion vs Science

Oh, absolutely, but don't stop there--you're just scratching the surface of the implications. Without science (and the technology that scientific thinking enabled us to develop), much of the lifestyle that we take for granted in the "civilized" world would not be possible. We'd be living in trees, caves, or earthen burrows dug by hand, since "buildings" by definition require an understanding of spatial geometry. We'd live by daylight, without electricity to light our nights or power any of the machines that make modern life possible. Our days would be spent almost entirely in the pursuit of food, with little or no time left over for "esoteric" pursuits like art, philosophy, or any of the other hallmarks of "great" civilizations.

But really, the whole "religion vs. science" argument is specious to begin with. Science, after all, follows from the combination of curiosity and a capacity for logical reasoning, both of which are considered to be innate human traits. If you posit that God created human beings, then you must also accept that He gave us that curiosity and that capacity for rational thought, ergo God made us all scientists.

The Genesis story about the Garden of Eden in effect is a parable about the religion vs. science debate. There the Tree of Knowledge represents science, and God's commandment not to eat its fruit represents the commitment to blind faith that religion demands. Adam and Eve had an opportunity to remain blissfully ignorant, letting God take care of everything for them, but in choosing to eat an apple from the Tree of Knowledge they were doomed to have to figure everything out for themselves. The Genesis story served the interests of its authors, of course--the clergy who sought to use it to encourage people not to think too much and to follow their moral authority--but at the same time the story acknowledges that there's no turning back from the opening of the human mind. We can't go back to the Garden of Eden--to that level of ignorance--much as some people would like to try.

The thing about science is that it's not a recent invention, contrary to the way many people seem to view it. It was not something that humankind developed all of a sudden during the 18th Century, despite the impression that a lot of textbooks convey. Science goes back a lot further, well past the ancient Greeks and the Arabian Golden Age. It goes back to the first waking moments of humankind, when we discovered--by deduction from experiment--that it was more effective and safer to hunt food animals with tools than to use our bare hands and feet. Early man observed what worked and what didn't, and used scientific thinking to refine his tools, first sharpening stones to cut meat and then recognizing that a sharpened stone at the end of a long stick was a clever way to kill dangerous prey without getting too close to the teeth and claws. Just because it didn't take place in a laboratory doesn't make this process any less "scientific"--it's how our minds work, whether you believe that we evolved this capacity or that God gave us this capacity.

Viewed in that light, then, science is the perfectly natural and inevitable "winner" of the debate; to live exclusively by religion would mean having to suppress a fundamental aspect of our nature as human beings--and indeed, one of God's gifts. Why would God give us minds so capable of reasoning and gifted with curiosity if He did not want us to use them? As even the Genesis story concedes, we're stuck with scientific thinking whether we like it or not--it's faith about which we have a choice. Do we want to choose not to wonder how the world works? Do we want to choose not to wonder whether there might be better ways to live our lives? To suppress our experimental natures, our natural curiosity, our ability to learn?

It's generally crowd-pleasing and least offensive to say that religion and science can happily coexist, but I don't think sitting on the fence really accomplishes anything. Living with both religion and science means drawing artificial partitions in the mind--deciding that some things are open to exploration, experimentation, and study, while other things are beyond questioning. It's a neat trick of the human mind that we can carry on this kind of balancing act, allowing ourselves to be intensely curious about some things yet willfully resisting that curiosity when it comes to the tenets of faith. A life based on faith alone would be very difficult to lead in a world surrounded by modern techology and medicine, though life based on science alone (i.e. atheism) is increasingly common. Still, most people seem to sit somewhere on the spectrum in between, picking and choosing their articles of faith--trust in Allah, but tie up your camel

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