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A John Haught Reader. John F. Haught
Читать онлайн.Название A John Haught Reader
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isbn 9781532661044
Автор произведения John F. Haught
Жанр Религия: прочее
Издательство Ingram
This way of relating religion to science is not content to leave the world divided into the two realms defined by the contrast position. Yet it also does not wish to revert to the superficial harmony of conflation either. It agrees that science and religion are logically and linguistically distinct, but it knows that, in the real world, they cannot be easily compartmentalized, as the contrast position supposes. After all, religion in the West has helped shape the history of science and scientific cosmology, in turn, has influenced theology. It is impossible to separate them completely, even though we can try to make clear logical distinctions in our definitions of them.
In addition, it seems unlikely that just any old cosmology will be compatible with just any old theology, as the contrast position would seem to allow. The kind of world described by evolutionary biology and big bang physics, for example, cannot peacefully coexist with the picture of God that Newton, Descartes, and perhaps even Thomas Aquinas idealized. Whether they are aware of it or not, theologians always bring at least implicit cosmological assumptions to their talk about God. But it often happens that these assumptions are scientifically out of date. The contact approach, therefore, is concerned that theology always remain positively “consonant” with cosmology.76 Theology cannot rely too heavily on science, but it must also pay attention to what is going on in the world of scientists. It must seek to express its ideas in terms that take the best of science into account, or else it will become intellectually irrelevant.
For that reason, the contact approach looks for an open-ended conversation between scientists and theologians. The word “contact” implies coming together without necessarily fusing. It allows for interaction, dialogue, and mutual impact, but forbids both conflation and segregation. It insists on preserving differences, but it also cherishes relationships.
Contact proposes that scientific knowledge can broaden the horizon of religious faith and that the perspective of religious faith can deepen our understanding of the universe. It does not hope to prove God’s existence from science but rather is content simply to interpret the latter’s discoveries within the framework of religious meaning. The days in which scientific ideas could be used to seal arguments for God’s existence are over. So this third approach will not attempt to shore up religious doctrines by appealing to any scientific concepts that may on the surface seem to require a transcendent grounding. Nevertheless, it considers it fruitful to survey and interpret the results of science with a sensitivity and consciousness that has already been shaped by religious faith.
The kind of religion we are discussing in this book, for example, characteristically strives to instill in its followers a special way of looking at things. Rooted in the story of Abraham, the prophetic faith traditions invite their followers to look for the promise that lies in all things. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam think of genuine “faith” as a confidence that new life and undreamed of possibilities are latent even in the most desperate of situations. The authentic religious attitude, then, is a steadfast conviction that the future is open and that an incalculable fulfillment awaits the entire cosmos.
At first sight, such a hopeful orientation of consciousness would seem to be anything but compatible with the “realism” that science demands of us. And yet, as we shall note often in the following chapters, many religious thinkers have found what they consider to be a remarkable accord between a faith-perspective shaped by a sense of reality’s promise, and the universe now coming to light as a consequence of new developments in science.
It is probably in the area of “contact” that the most interesting conversations between scientists and theologians are occurring today. Admittedly, these conversations sometimes resemble high-wire acts and the participants occasionally plunge back down into either conflation or contrast. Contact is much more difficult to stabilize than the other approaches. To avoid burning up in the fire of conflation or being frozen in the ice of contrast, it assumes, at times, a rather fluid and even turbulent character. Its efforts to find coherence are interesting and promising, but seldom completely conclusive.
Nevertheless, according to the contact position, though scientific “facts” are always in some sense our own constructs and are inevitably theory-laden, they are not simply wild guesses that have no reference to a real world existing independently of our preferences. This appreciation of the mind’s capacity to put us in touch with the real world—in an always provisional way—is known as “critical realism.” Critical realism maintains that our understanding, whether scientific or theological, may be oriented toward the real world; but precisely because the world is always too big for the human mind, our thoughts are also always open to correction.77
Science and religion make meaningful contact with each other, especially when they decide to play by the rules of what we are calling critical realism. Accordingly, good science hopes more or less to approximate the way things are, but it is always willing to be critical of its contemporary ways of representing the world. And in the case of religion, the same critical realism allows that though our religious symbols and ideas need constant correction, they may nonetheless reflect—in an always limited way—a Transcendent Reality which is truly “there” and which always necessarily transcends our subjective narrowness.
Scientific theories and religious metaphors, in this epistemological setting, are not just imaginative concoctions, as much modern and postmodern thought asserts. Rather, they bear an always tentative relationship to a real world and its ultimate ground. This world beyond our representations is always only incompletely grasped, and its presence constantly “judges” our hypotheses, inviting us continually to deepen our understanding in both science and religion. It is their mutual sharing in this critical openness to the real that provides the basis for genuine “contact” between science and religion.
IV. Confirmation
While it would be quite fruitful to leave our discussions in science and religion at the stage of contact, I would personally prefer to go even further. I appreciate all the efforts to discover consonance between science and religion, but I envisage an even more intimate relationship of religion to science than any of the first three approaches has yet explicitly acknowledged. I propose that religion is supportive—in a very deep way—of the entire scientific enterprise.
Religion, of course, should not be solicited to reinforce the dangerous ways in which scientific knowledge has often been applied in practice. My suggestion is simply that religion essentially fortifies the humble desire to know that gives rise to science in the first place. I call this approach “confirmation,” a term equivalent to “strengthening” or “supporting.” It holds that religion, when carefully purged of idolatrous implications, fully endorses and even undergirds the scientific effort to make sense of the universe.
I am aware that science has come under heavy criticism today. Many critics even think that it is responsible for most of the ills of the modern world. Were it not for science, they say, we would have no nuclear threat, no global pollution of the air, soil, and water. We and our planet would probably be better off without it. Science, they claim, is at root an assault upon nature, a crushing exercise in control. It is a Faustian effort to wrest all mystery from the cosmos so that we can become masters of it. Some even argue that science is inherently patriarchal, an exploitation of nature closely tied to our culture’s oppression of women.
Obviously theology would not wish to endorse science if it were inherently connected to these evils. But I suspect that much criticism of science mistakenly identifies it with trends and motives that can, at least in principle, be clearly distinguished from science itself. Essentially speaking, I consider science to be a modest but fruitful attempt to grasp, with mathematical clarity, some small part of the totality of reality. Any pretensions to omniscience, such as we find in scientism, are not a part of science at all—a point that Appleyard cannot accept, but one that the contrast position rightly clarifies in its protest against conflation.
Most criticisms of science fail to distinguish the humble desire to know that