Religion, Science, and Humility

A Message Delivered at
The Unitarian-Universalist Church of Roanoke, Virginia
January 22, 2006


First, I want to congratulate you for being here. By "here" I mean more than attendance today, when a visiting speaker occupies the pulpit, with all the danger that involves. I mean being in a congregation of people who have not given up on the religious enterprise, people who light candles representing your concern for one another and your commitment to a world of justice and peace.

If you are at all like me, you could find it easy to abandon religion altogether. Much of what claims to be religious in our current culture is, from my point of view, narrow and mean-spirited. I often find myself pushed to the edge. I become especially dispirited when I learn of some group of religious people who, in their arrogance, claim to know more about science than the scientists. Then I am tempted to say, "That’s the last straw. Count me out."

Yet, I have not left the religious fold. And neither have you. I am here, and you are here because we are convinced that it is possible to embrace a gentler, more modest religion, a set of convictions that remains open to dialogue with other people of faith, and dialogue with science.

I congratulate you because what you are and what you have to contribute is greatly needed today. Many of the issues currently being discussed in the public arena are of ultimate importance. The most vital of those concerns goes to the heart of life: what does it mean to be human? What, if anything, is unique about life in general, and human life in particular? As those questions are discussed, we need rational, humble religious voices. Arrogance will not carry the day. Arrogance cuts off debate by saying, "I already have the answers. I do not need to listen to any other sources."

One of the other voices we do need to hear is the voice of science. I am convinced, as are most of you, that science and religion are not mortal enemies, as they have been portrayed in Kansas, Pennsylvania, and other places. My life has been defined by religious faith, yet I have been fascinated by, enamored by, science. I am stimulated by questions such as the one put before us by in the reading from Harold DeWolf: why is this a world in which ice crystals collect on window panes in patterns of exquisite beauty? Or, the most basic question of all: why is there something, instead of nothing? In my soul, science and religion do not battle. They reinforce each other, nourish one another and occasionally have an interesting debate with one another.

Especially, religious people should not reject evolution. We should, however, say "no" to the way the current debate over evolution is being carried on. A few days ago I heard a religious speaker discussing, and acknowledging the validity of, evolution. During the address he rather sheepishly acknowledged that he had been born in Kansas. I waited for him to tell us that all the remainder of us had evolved, and only those born in Kansas had been intelligently designed. He missed his chance. This entire debate, at least in the form it is being carried on, deserves nothing better than to be laughed away.

Evolution is a continuing process. When we look backward, we find our egos bruised as we confront our earthy origins. Yet, we also discover, happily, that we are connected with all other forms of life. If we look forward in evolution, the picture brightens. If the human race does not destroy itself, and if it continues to evolve over a long period of time, it will be because of a form of the survival of the fittest. Human survival depends on producing more Gandhis and Mother Terresas, more Martin Luther Kings and more people like Jesus and the Buddha. Many religious thinkers today believe this is the way we are moving. It may require thousands of years, but evolution can be the friend of religion.

Religion and science can discuss basic issues only when each field has a modest view of itself and its own reach. A modest view of religion is what you, and your tradition, represent.

So it is always a special pleasure for me to come and worship with you, knowing that you represent a modest faith.

Here, however, is a problem with people like us. We are often so eager to avoid the inflated discourse of other religious people that we tend to be too accommodating. Speaking for myself, I often ignore the fact that even my waffling, modest religious position has something to contribute to the public dialogue. My anger at fundamentalism is so strong that I am often blinded to the fact that religion has not cornered the market in arrogance. Scientists can also have inflated views of themselves. Because science seems to have contributed so much, and to have their processes under control, their arrogance can be intimidating.

So, my primary message today is this: do not be intimidated. Do not sell yourselves short. As people on a spiritual journey you have much to contribute.

Science, successful as it is, can easily turn into scientism—the idea that the scientific method can answer all the questions of human life. Arrogance in science stifles debate as quickly as arrogance in faith.

Some time ago I tuned into public television when Daniel Dennett, a highly regarded philosopher of Tuff’s University, appeared with two physicists from MIT. The program was a celebration of a book that Dennett was writing in which, they reported, the author would prove that God does not exist.I found myself remembering that Christian thinkers, since Anselm, have been trying to find a way to prove the existence of God—a project that consistently fails since God, if she/he does exist, dwells in a realm that is not subject to the usual laws of logic and measurement. Nonetheless, Dennett and his two physicist friends were having a jolly time listing all the evils that religion has brought upon humankind, and predicting the dawn of an idyllic new age in which scientific knowledge had rid the world of superstitions in all their forms.

Can you imagine a world from which all religion has been removed, a world that no longer recognizes truths that must be conveyed by myth or drama? What a flat and boring world that would be! I appreciate the comment of a writer who, speaking of the new, technological forms of worship and preaching that are emerging, asked, "Can you imagine what Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 'I Have a Dream speech would look like in PowerPoint?'" Science should keep away from some precious realities. A world devoid of myth, or drama, or dreams is a world I choose not to inhabit.

The three men of science I mentioned were correct about several things. Religion has been guilty of almost countless crimes against humanity. But what Dennett and his friends did not mention in their discussion is that the two major destroyers of people and culture in the twentieth century, Nazism and Stalinism, were thoroughly secular, and that Stalinism in particular was anti-religion. Ridding the world of all religion is obviously not the path to utopia. They did not mention that the majority of the scientists under Hitler rallied to the dictator’s side and produced infamous experiments on Jews, dwarfs and twins. The work of Dr. Josef Mengele was especially horrific. In this country, science gave itself to the Tuskegee experiments on non-consenting poor blacks of Mississippi, and has offered us the atomic bomb and other efficient means of killing and maiming one another. Science, too, has its dark side.

When science alone is respected, what will stand in the way of the hucksters who insist that life is nothing more than embrace of pleasure and accumulation of wealth?

I take the risk here of sounding like a fundamentalist lecturing scientists. I hope I not slipped into that role. I am convinced, however, that those who spend their lives pursuing science need to hear the evangelist Paul’s insight: "If I have all knowledge and have not love, I am nothing."

Gandhi stated the same truth more concisely, when he listed among his seven social sins, "science without humanity."

As I implied earlier, the subject that led me to these speculations is the conflict over evolution and intelligent design that is playing itself out in several places around the country.

In this case, again, my anger is mostly against my fellow religionists. Some of the notions that have come from right wing religion over the past years have approached the ludicrous. I hold visions of a conservative couple arising on Sunday morning in their home made comfortable by central heat and air conditioning, taking medications developed with animal testing using the insights of evolution, then traveling in an automobile controlled by a sophisticated computer, and completing their morning by sharing in a service of worship in which the pastor insists in his sermon that scientists have it all wrong! This is fear at work—a fear that manifests itself as arrogance. Fear makes people say, "We have all the answers and we will listen to truths from no other source." Ultimately, this arrogance makes the entire religious enterprise into a laughingstock.

Now I want to do something that may surprise you. Perhaps I should be honest and admit that what I am about to say surprises me. I am about to say something kind about the fundamentalist couple I just described. At a level deeper than they may be aware, they are on to an important reality. They are rebelling against an arrogance in science that matches the arrogance in religion.

If we can set aside our distress at their methods, we hear in the fundamentalists’ arguments something plaintive but real. They are engaged in a struggle for human dignity. When they encounter the findings of science over the past few centuries, they believe that they are being told that we humans are nothing more than slabs of meat prancing proudly over our tiny planet, pretending we are important. They feel those insults should be challenged. At that point, I believe they are correct. How sad it is that religious conservatives are defending an important concern in all the wrong ways.

The issue is being presented as a conflict between religion and science. It is not. We should be talking, not about creationism vs. evolution, but about meaning vs. meaningless. In that conflict, we who cling, no matter how tenuously, to religion, have a significant investment.

But where, you might ask, does the rubber hit the road, as it were, in the possible overreach of science into concerns of the spirit? I want to suggest only two. Many more could be named. One is the invasion of privacy that technology makes possible. Human dignity implies personal privacy, the preservation of a sacred, inner space that others can enter only by invitation. Today, technology means that both commercial and government agencies are able to store enormous amounts of information about us, information that allows advertisers to get inside our heads, and governments to exercise control. A second concern may be more mine than yours, but I am convinced it should belong to everyone. Human dignity involves the ability to make choices, to preserve control over one’s existence. Nonetheless, research centers around the country (and around the globe) are committed to efforts to develop what is called "Artificial Intelligence." AI is trying to create computers that make choices, like people. Of course, there are already six billion people on the globe who makes choices like people, but someone seems to believe that a machine can make better choices. What they forget is that making choices, even poor choices, is the essence of being human.

I have given up most of the dogma I was once taught was essential. But I cling to a basic part of faith: that life itself, and those attributes that make life human, hold meaning that cannot be measured by any laboratory instrument.

Religions have a variety of ways of speaking of the spiritual basis, the underlying dignity, of human life. Buddhists commit themselves to awakening the Buddha nature in every human being. Jewish scripture reminds us that all human beings carry within them the breath of God. The Christian evangelist Paul spoke of the Christ who lived in him. These are all ways of responding to Carl Jung’s famous question: are we, in any way, touched by and in touch with the Infinite?

Jung’s question may be the most important question we will ever face. The question will never be answered to everyone’s satisfaction. Yet, this is the issue that should be discussed. Is human life nothing more than the accidental bumping together of random molecules, or is there some ultimate meaning in it all? Does human consciousness point to a dimension of depth not subject to our usual analysis?

The issues I have raised are not proper subjects for the classrooms of our public schools. They, are, however, too important to be ignored. The issues relating to human dignity are among the ones the remainder of us hope the Unitarian-Universalists will discuss openly. Society will look to you for guidance, not just in how to solve these issues, but in how to discuss them.

For dialogue to be effective, we need a modest science to match the modest religion that you represent. We cannot do much to affect science here. What you can do, and are doing, is to model an embrace of truth that remains open to the truths seen by others. In an atmosphere in which arrogance seems to reign, the model that you represent is especially important.

Again, I want to congratulate you for continuing the rich tradition you represent. You are carriers of a religious humility that makes dialogue possible. On the other hand, I want to encourage you to recognize that modest does not mean docile. Please do not undervalue yourselves! You have glimpsed the basic dignity, the indefinable sacredness, of human life. Do not hide that light under a bushel. Without your vision, a livable existence may perish.



Jack Good
Roanoke, Virginia