Ken Myers, a former National Public Radio figure, gave a presentation in Cole Auditorium on “Religion and Science” to hundreds of students and faculty on Wednesday, March 28.
“Both terms in popular usage have hardened into defensive positions that have created an unnecessary sense of opposition,” Myers said.
Science is regarded as purely objective and detached from personal choices, said Myers, while religion is seen as entirely subjective, more personal and private.
According to John Polkinhorne, a physicist and theologian, the ideas and thoughts that can be gained from these matters are obstructed by the myth of the battle between the “scientific light” and the “religious darkness.”
Yet, there has been fruitful conversation among scientists, philosophers, and theologian about the relationship between science and religion, said Myers.
“It’s a fruitful conversation because the scientific and theological ways of knowing actually have much in common,” Myers explained.
Thomas Kuhn, author of “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” said that the main challenge is the assumption that we can separate the objective from the subjective.
Some scientists say that when they are behaving in a completely objective manner when, in reality, science relies heavily on the authority of other scientists, Myers pointed out.
“Science must rely heavily on the authority of fellow scientists,” explained Myers. “The community of scientists is one of authority, of trust, and tradition, as are religious communities.”
According to Herbert Butterfield, an English historian, people tend to point to the scientific revolution as outshining everything since Christianity and reduce the Renaissance and the Reformation as “mere episodes,” Myers said.
But, in the 17th century, there wasn’t a single cultural unit called “science,” said Myers. A diverse variety of cultural practices was aimed at understanding, explaining, and controlling the natural world.
There’s a sense that’s detached science from all sorts of human activities, which is very similar to how some people regard religion, Myers pointed out.
“What we call science and what we call religion are deeply human activities. That they’re situated in human history and they’re connected to other aspects of human experience and, to the dismay of zealots on both sides, they’re very much intertwined with one another,” said Myers.
In the late 19th and 20th centuries, there was talk that science was the “new religion” and had succeeded the position that religion had previously enjoyed, Myers said.
In his 1874 book, “History of the Conflict Between Science and Religion,” John William Draper, claimed that science and religion were “necessarily at war.”
According to Draper, there will come a time where men have to choose between immobile faith and ever-advancing science.
Steven Shapin, a historian of science, said that “there’s no such thing as science and there’s no such thing as religion.” They are huge words that lump together human practices, beliefs and institutions, he said.
According to Shapin, science and religion are much more complex than the terms suggest, Myers said.
“I’m not trying to prohibit the use of certain words,” Myers said. “I just want us to recognize that they are used really loosely. The concrete realities that they describe might be obscured if we’re not mindful of the fuzziness of the word.”
“We know the world as persons and as persons we are necessarily tied to an inheritance of knowledge,” Myers said in his closing remarks.
“Merely to use a language, with its distinctive, poetic possibilities, is to be involved in a tradition of knowledge. Such traditions either in science or religion, can be reformed but they can’t be avoided.”
–Anna Tielmann (Taken from The Spectator Vol. III, Issue 22)
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