Faith's War Against Science

As the discussion about faiths' objections to the science of evolution heats up, it is becoming apparent this dispute is really being perceived by the faith community as a fight for survival. And few recognized that it is a false fight because faith's place in society is not at all threatened by science, regardless of its discoveries and understandings. Few seem to recognize there are plenty of areas in which science has little or no data, let alone meaningful models. This is most obvious regarding how consciousness arises from brain function, how a self-aware self forms from brain activity, and most importantly what these descriptions imply about how we should (to be accurate, honest and forthright) view ourselves.

Faith has had a centuries-long reliance on man's bewilderment about just what sort of creature he is. Faith has also recognized people are quite ignorant about how man and the larger natural world functions. These have provided the faith community with an opportunity, if not a temptation, to offer people some tangible connections between those spiritual abstractions the religiously-learned have accepted and what the common person knows from day-to-day experience. In former times and prior to receiving religious conversion by a representative of whichever faith was active in the community, ordinary people explained everyday experiences by various superstitions. This led to the plethora of gods and demons known to history as well as a need for everyday people to supplicate or entice favor from these perceived entities, lest they become victims of some transgression.

Now to be fair, the faith community has not really been all that much more advanced in its thinking than its constituency. The faith community has suffered greatly from its own superstitions, putting aside how its core ideas and premises might be categorized. This situation led to cathedrals being covered by gargoyles, to strange incantations and rituals melding local folklore with some central religious ideology, and more. Because the faith community has been in nearly the same boat of ignorance as its congregations, it should be no surprise the community of faith also could make some missteps. (No one would deny the common man has made many missteps, would they?) And among these has be one not much acknowledged to date: a reliance upon the material world to provide support for its religious assertions.

Meanwhile science has arisen and advanced, now sufficiently that it is at every turn stepping on faith's supports in the material world. Science has begun to assemble a robust and compelling explanation for things faith has relied upon across the centuries as demonstrations of the correctness of its assertions. Thus it should be no surprise that faith is feeling squeezed by the advances of science. And that squeeze is being felt in no place greater than science's sophisticated understanding of how man formed and manifested in this world.

Faith recognized millennia ago any convincing belief system has to provide its constituency with an explanation of man's origins if it is to be taken seriously. Most every system of faith has such an explanation. As well, enduring systems have offered a description of man's destiny and by all this some glimpse of what man is. These developments have led to the fundamentals of faith known around the world: soul and afterlife and God (the source -- origin -- of man).

Now science has come along with an alternative explanation complete with considerable evidence. Today we see faith reacting as if its authority is being threatened by these developments. So faith is attacking science.

Some will insist science is not the target, that the target is only one idea from science -- evolution. But this claim obscures the fact evolution arose as an idea in exactly the same way as have all other developments in science -- by inquiry, exploration, examination of what is known, the development of inferences from the data, and the devising of tests or predictions by which those inferences can be proven and extended. So for faith to suggest science has missed in the realm of evolution while performing well in all the other spheres of its interests rings hollow.

Basically faith's efforts to deny the understandings of science will only extend the suffering of the very people they claim to be serving. Faith's efforts to spread disinformation about science, faith's agenda to erode politically public support for science, faith's insistence its justification and purpose relies upon discarding the findings of science -- all these will eventually make a pariah of faith, and at a time when faith could provide a valuable function for society.

Mankind is faced with some major issues as it becomes an aware world presence. How to integrate various cultures in ways that honor all cultures yet allow people to share in the abundance that is now possible? How to understand and explain who we are in light of the discoveries of science, psychology, neurology? How to find a basis for morality? How to treat our world sustainably?

Instead we see efforts to defend old turf, and further, we see efforts to sustain by force ideas so archaic they require ever more repressive child-rearing practices lest the new ones (the children) coming into our world point out to one and all that "the emperor has no clothes".

People are being asked to grow up. Mankind is entering a sort of puberty. (One wonders what will manifest out of mankind's emerging "fertility".) Like any other adolescent, we are having a fit, and trying some pretty wild stuff. But it is quite clear, if mankind's adolescence has any commonality with the adolescence we all must transverse individually, then who we are to become will only remotely reflect who we were in our childhood.

It's all very exciting and a time to be extra alert! Remember: Adolescents are a bit accident-prone.

On Purpose

A common objection to atheism centers on the topic of purpose. The major religions -- more particularly the monotheistic religions, and most specifically Christianity as it is voiced by American evangelicals -- these all defend their importance by arguing they give people purpose. They all declare (again, Christianity most loudly) they know life's purpose, and atheism and all the philosophies founded on physical existence do not.

This contention reaches a peak in the on-going dispute about evolution and creationism, including that sheep-in-wolf's-clothes, Intelligent Design. Many of the religiously devout assert that evolution's reliance upon random change basically implies that man has no purpose. They declare that if man has appeared by accident, then he has come into existence without purpose. Therefore his existence today has no purpose. Religionists of most every persuasion then argue that life without purpose is not tolerable, let alone moral.

They may have a point. However, we have no evidence, except for people's imaginings, that we have appeared for some reason other than by an accident of nature. The most rigorous formulation of this viewpoint claims that life is an accident certain to happen, given enough time and the nature of matter, and that this is our reality.

Believers contend that a being without purpose has no way to determine right from wrong. They convincingly declare: How can humankind without God have a purpose? If there is no God, then, they claim, man has no purpose. This, they assert, is just one of the problems with atheism.

Often following closely behind this line of thinking is a reminder of humanity's painful experience with atheistic communism. Linking atheism to communist institutions confuses politics with philosophy, spirituality and world view, and serves to condemn non-superstitious ideas as evil. Such a strategy may earn believers a few debating points but it does nothing to advance a dialog that seeks to explore our situation.

Religionists commonly contend they have no need to explore or seek since they already have the answer. They mistakenly perceive their external authority (such as the Bible) as granting their truth greater authenticity than any other viewpoint that lacks such an anchor. They can only make this mistake because they fail to notice that those even among their own congregations who have experienced first hand a synthesis no longer rely upon such externalities like traditional authority for their certainty. Instead, the traditions become useful tools and vehicles by which the convictions of these individuals can be conveyed.

Anyone whose understanding no longer relies on conventional religious concepts regards the artifacts of tradition as at best historical and usually of little contemporary significance. This is not to suggest the wisdom within every tradition is discarded or ignored. Among non-believers -- those who truly don't accept any of the traditional belief systems -- understanding is self-realized and in no way reliant upon any of the icons of traditional spirituality. For these people, their understanding is different.

For instance, they have no trouble seeing humanity as purposeless. They are quite sure people exist now, and have existed in all of the past, without any purpose beyond what they themselves created. Their understanding says it is people themselves who have realized the idea of purpose and thereby created it, and, further, it is people who have created for themselves some specific purpose. They are quite convinced that purpose is a quality borne by one's community, transmitted through upbringing and insight, and as such, it undergoes change and even evolves.

Rather than lamenting our existence in a harsh and barren universe, these minds find that existence without purpose is utterly liberating. They see that we do live in an indifferent universe, that Life is rough, and that we have found ways to sweeten life. We even have found features of existence that nourish us and encourage us.

Among these is man's curiosity and each person's affinity for the full scope of virtues humanity has managed to label, and almost certainly for some for which we have as yet only vague words. For such minds, our affinity for the virtues are "in-built" -- a "gift" of evolution -- even if those faculties are also fragile and need careful nurturing. Human creativity has given us insight into this aspect of our situation, and seems certain to provide us with more understanding. Creativity itself is both a product and a vehicle for people to find purpose. People's acceptance and trust of their (and others') creativity sustains and enlarges human purpose.

All of the great domains of human development have given us purpose. These include science, art, labor, and spirituality in all its forms. Viewing human culture and human destiny in this way places us not on some external agency's conveyor belt to some defined destination, but indicates a more responsive reality -- that we are today participating in creating the world we live in.

This world is not the result of people having forgotten their purpose. It is the result of people striving to manifest the purpose they glimpse. Of course this viewpoint does not claim the world as it is is the best we can do. Far from it! But this viewpoint does accept the reality of the world as it is, and acknowledges the contribution and responsibility of past human decisions for the human world as it is now.

This framing of the human condition shapes any consideration of morality also. From this viewpoint morality is just one facet of human creativity. It has developed as far as it has. Our current mode of living -- with moral ideals existing alongside often well-rationalized yet hypocritical practices -- serves only to demonstrate consciousness and morality is a work in progress, not something manifesting in life fully-developed. There is no medicine one can take just one time to achieve moral perfection.

Thus to those who have left behind superstition, other people are making a fundamental mistake by attributing to some higher authority their moral position or goal. They will argue that any reliance upon external authority can best be viewed as a stage of development. This brings into focus the viewpoint of the non-believer: that matter itself, and all its manifestations and permutations, is developing, evolving, advancing. We who are "particles" in that river have arisen within and because of that process by which development continues. Our understanding reflects that flow, as does the nature and quality of our consciousness.

Consciousness itself is one creation and manifestation of this impulse or flow. Our religions, and ideas like Intelligent Design, are attempts to both explain and provide people with a relationship to the "process of existence". We are but groping, ignorant and awakening beings trying to make sense of ourselves and our predicament, as well as to function as expressions of that which we wish to understand. The recursions in this situation cannot be over-stated.

People today have arisen and developed from a more primitive era. Their ideas and beliefs have similarly developed. Today, many concepts about man's place in the world, who we are, and what existence is, bear vestiges from our more confused past. Our ideas and models, our ways of talking, our depictions of the relationship between us and the all -- these carry and maintain now-obsolete ideas from our past.

At one time those ideas were transformational. At one time, people were "set afire" when they encountered these now-old ideas. But as with all things, these ideas have aged. Their time of ascendance has passed. They have done their work. Now they restrain and repress as much as they provide a foundation for more precise and advanced ideas.

We stand upon the shoulders of those who have preceded us. Our contribution will provide a platform upon which new minds and beings will develop and contribute. In this way is humanity flowering.

All efforts to express our situation must of necessity suffer from the limitations of our understanding. We cannot state truth rightly perhaps because we are part of it.

Now we have today a clamor from religious tradition to recognize humanity's waywardness, to adopt or re-adopt beliefs once regarded as living truth that today have been put on the back burner by the majority of people. This effort denies human advancement. It is no surprise its focus is on subservience, devotion, obedience, and piety. Those ideas have their place, but like all concepts that appear in the river of development, they must themselves evolve or be left behind.

Some ideas cannot evolve. They are more like life-preservers -- useful while we float in the water, but pointless once we reach the shore. These we need to abandon.

Now some might consider these statements pretentious or worse. Some might think this author sees himself outside these forces and trends. Nothing could be further from the truth. We all, including I, are in this together. We are all we have. Really.

It is true that existence has been our mother. Apparently. This makes our current practice of removing all traces of the natural world careless. That world certainly contains clues about ourselves, about where we came from, about how that womb works. Without access to the natural world, the only way we can discover what it might tell us is by trial and error. And error will certainly add to human suffering.

This viewpoint welcomes our purposelessness. This viewpoint recognizes we have a task -- to understand our purpose by creating it. This viewpoint realizes morality is a hard-won jewel, not some mandate from supreme authority (even though that concept does have its place as a stage of moral development). This viewpoint acknowledges there is more to purpose and morality than definition -- that effective transgenerational transmission has at least as much importance as what is transmitted.

This state of affairs is not a catastrophe. This is not a moral or philosophical quagmire. Rather, it is a glory and a blessing, and a possibility we could only dream of and yearn for. It is our situation.