Science + Religion: A closer look at penguins

November 27, 2006

It’s Monday and everyone’s hung over from the long Thanksgiving weekend, so it seems suitable time to revisit “this clumsy illustration”:http://www.thudfactor.com/wordpress/2006/11/22/science-religion/ on the relationship between science and religion. More after the jump:

The first image is indistinct, shadowy, and in places very distorted. But we can see it kind of looks like penguins. This is religion.

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The second image is very precise in certain locations. And we can say with certainty that there are penguins in there someplace. But in other places, it has little to nothing to say. This is science.

p{text-align:center}. !http://www.thudfactor.com/pimages/religion/science.jpg!

In the third image, the places where science allows us to see clearly are overlaid onto the worldview of religion. Where possible, the precise scientific knowledge replaces or augments the impressions we have from the religious view.

p{text-align:center}. !http://www.thudfactor.com/pimages/religion/combined.jpg!

Both science and religion give us a sense of penguins — that is, they describe the world around us. The weakness of religion is that it is imprecise, distorted, and in some places downright misleading. Christianity cops to this charge[1] expressed (while expressing faith in future clarity) in 1 Corinthians 13:

fn1(sidenote). 1 Corinthians 13 is also excellent evidence that fundamentalists don’t read their own scripture as it does a lot of damage to the notion of the Bible as being the complete, revealed, unchanging Word of God.

bq. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end [ ... ] For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Likewise, the failure of science is that it provides highly detailed information under very strict conditions and practically nothing outside of those parameters. _This_ weakness is expressed by the oft-repeated phrase “further study is required”:

bq. Further study is required to define how the functional roles of Lrp5 and Lrp6 are shared in the control of bone development and homeostasis. [ "Skeletal defects in ringelschwanz mutant mice...":http://dev.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/131/21/5469 ]

When most discussions of science and religion derail is when they start trying to find clear divisions between the “appropriate” spheres of knowledge for the two. These formulations, of which Stephen J. Gould’s “Non-overlapping Magesteria”:http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html is one, are inherently unstable because both the goals of science and religion _are_ the same — to explain the operation of the universe and help people respond to it in the most appropriate fashion.

We also risk irrelevance if we discuss religion and science as they _should be_, rather than as they are. Some religions — primarily Religions of the Book — insist that their knowledge is complete and accurate. And philosophical rationalists, who look to science exclusively for knowledge and understanding of the world, tend to credit science with more knowledge than it actually has. At some point science _may_ reveal all the penguins. But billions and billions of people will live out their lives before that occurs, and asking people to disregard religious lessons, traditions, and experiences until science can validate them seems like a great deal to ask.

What I’m suggesting is that knowledge gained through science should supplant and/or augment our understanding of religion. While science does its important, accurate, plodding job, the rest of us can continue to use the imperfect tools we have at hand. We do not have to abandon prayer, ritual, meditiation, contemplation, or even magic as long as we keep it in perspective: our religious knowledge, like our scientific knowledge, is incomplete, misleading, and possibly even wrong. In short, it is not worth killing people over. And when science does manage to come up with a True Thing — the orbit of the Earth around the sun, or the evolutionary development of organisms — our religion, which was ad-hoc anyway, needs to reorient to make room for it.

This does mean that religion takes a back seat to science, but I have always believed the claim that any religion has a complete and accurate representation of the penguins to be a touch overstated. But it does keep religion in the same car, where the experiences, wisdom, and knowledge of our pre-scientific ancestors and non-scientific contemporaries can continue to guide us. Until, of course, we see face to face and no further study is required.

Posted in Religion, Science