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This sermon
is prompted by a question from a 16-year-old friend who is
wrestling with the connection between faith and science as
though it were an either/or choice. He is not only a good
science student in high school, but also a faithful and thoughtful
church person. It appears the culture wars are setting up
this dichotomy. Falsely, I might add! I grew up not thinking
much about faith and science and whether they were a choice
between two opposites. I suspect they were compartmentalized
in my thinking, separate rather than connected.
My first
encounter with science was struggling through physics in high
school, learning the scientific method, making observations,
doing experiments, recording the data and drawing conclusions
- a useful life skill. For me, Sputnik put science on the
map. Education from that point forward seemed to focus on
science. The Sputnik era culminated in the race to and landing
on the moon in 1969. "Awe" would be the only way
to describe my feeling. I can remember where I was that night
as my family sat down to watch Neil Armstrong set foot on
the moon. It was an awesome experience. It was the triumph
of human endeavor. It was a heady moment. I never gave it
a thought in the context of faith. Science then faded from
my view.
What words
or images of science come to mind for you? When I think of
science and the scientific method, I conjure up a physical
world, a world of observation and testing, objective rigorous
reason concerned with matter and how we and things work. The
human genome project and the mapping of our DNA have recaptured
my imagination much in the way Sputnik and the moon landing
did. It's as though I have been away from science and a fascination
with it. What is your story with science? What words come
to mind? What is your experience? The atom bomb, the Salk
vaccine? The issue seems to be not the discoveries themselves
but how we use the information. For what purpose? For what
good?
On the
faith side of the ledger, in spite of the fact that I grew
up and went to church regularly, I never really gave it much
thought. It was something you did with your family. Then in
the sixties, like Sputnik and the moon landing, I was jolted
out of my faith complacency with the pronouncement on the
cover of Time magazine that "God is Dead!"
The book Secular City came along at the same time to
challenge my faith. The recent obituary in the millennial
issue of the Economist magazine had an article with
the intriguing headline: "After a lengthy career, the
Almighty recently passed into history. Or did He(She)?"
Another challenge to my faith! What does faith bring to mind
for you? Traditionally we have categorized faith as being
concerned with spiritual matters, that which is beyond our
senses-leaving the rest, the facts if you will, to the realm
of science.
What does
the word faith conjure up in your head? For me it is otherness,
things hoped for but not seen, confidence, trust, mystery,
risk, Of God, From God, For God, the universe grounded in
transcendental reality. Faith is less interested in how things
work than in what they mean.
When trying
to title this as yet unwritten sermon, three words came to
mind regarding science and faith. (This is an SAT vocabulary
quiz for the youth.) The first word, for the cynic in me,
was "oxymoron," defined as a combination of incongruous
or contradictory words. Then came "paradox," defined
as a tenet contrary to received opinion; an assertion seemingly
contradictory or opposed to common sense but that may be true
and fact. Closer, I thought.
Finally
I hit on "conundrum," which Webster defines as a
kind of riddle based upon some fanciful or fantastical resemblance
between things seemingly quite unlike, forming a puzzling
question of which the answer is a pun or involves a pun. Believing
that God has a sense of humor, that was the word I liked.
Besides, it sounds neat.
Barbara
Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, in her book The Luminous
Web: Essays on Science and Religion, refers
to pastoral ministry as "God of the Gaps" - those
moments when technology and science fail to explain life and
death, where faith steps into the breach. For her it is what
it means to be a hospital chaplain - the time when the stethoscope
gives way to the Bible. She relates that it is at that point
where all things that are supposed to work, don't work anymore
and people are faced with the mystery of being - a reality
I experienced this week on my hospital calls on parishioners
battling cancer. This seems to me to be the point where science
and faith inform each other.
Which
phrase carries more weight with the culture, with you: "Scientific
studies show"....or "Thus says the Lord"!!
It seems
to me that this conundrum, or whatever you call it, between
science and faith has followed a pattern of marriage, divorce
and now, in the new millennium, reconciliation. In the ancient
world science and faith were considered two ways of being
curious about the world. The marriage reached its closest
bond in the natural theology of Thomas Aquinas. The world
was not split into sacred and secular. The breakdown in the
marriage began in the sixteenth century with Copernicus and
Galileo who deduced that the earth revolved around the sun
instead of vice versa. A quickie divorce followed. The institutional
church was unforgiving with Galileo and his apostasy until,
literally, last year.
However,
he saw his revolutionary scientific discovery in a different
light. He was able to proclaim the oneness of scientific discovery
and faith: "I render infinite thanks to God for being
so kind as to make me alone the first observer of marvels
kept hidden in obscurity for all previous centuries."
The truth of that statement lives today with ever new discoveries:
the human genome, DNA mapping, Chaos Theory. Every day, science
is giving us a new glimpse into God's creation. It is ironic
that while Galileo didn't see his discovery as diminishing
his faith, his discovery in fact ushered in the Age of Reason
and ushered out the Age of Faith.
The nadir
of the breach between science and faith, however, seems to
have been reached recently. I cite two examples. In 1981 the
National Academy of Sciences adopted this policy statement
in response to the decision by two states to give equal time
to "creation science." "Religion and
Science are separate and mutually exclusive realms of human
thought." Not if you accept the word of the Psalmist
who proclaims that all things come of thee.
The second
incidence I would cite is that on April 1, 1993 (April Fools'
Day no less!), the distinguished scientific journal Nature
censured Cambridge University for accepting a million
pounds from the novelist Susan Howatch. The writer had given
the money to establish the "Starbridge Lectureship"
in theology and natural science. The journal coldly commented
that such a conjunction of natural science and theology was
absurd and only indicated the shameful length to which British
universities would go to attract money from the private sector.
The journal greeted with irony and disdain the university's
contention that there must be an interaction between theology
and science in an effort to obtain greater understanding of
our current existence. Ms. Howatch is simply wrong, judged
the journal! It is not the case that scientific conclusions
and religious passions are, as Ms. Howatch contended, "no
longer seen as opposed but complementary, two aspects of one
truth." "Nonsense!" declared the magazine.
The tide,
however, is turning as evidenced by such books as God:
The Evidence, which the Arbon Dennis Men's Group read
last fall. The book details how physicists are discovering
an unexplainable order to the universe, medical researchers
are reporting the extraordinary healing powers of prayer,
and psychologists are discovering that religious faith is
a powerful contributor to mental health.
A recent
article in the New York Times entitled (incorrectly,
I might add) "Science Expands, Religion Contracts,"
contained a litany of efforts to see science as a tool for/of
theology. For example, there is the Center for Theology and
the Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union in
Berkeley, California; a Brown University professor and microbiologist
is author of "Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search
for Common Ground between God and Evolution;" the
Science and Religion Center in Chicago; the God and Science
project at Amherst College. What in creation is going on here?
Albert
Einstein got it right when he wrote: "Science without
religion is lame; religion without science is blind!"
The novelist
Dan Wakefield wrote in 1989: "Only a generation ago,
we enlightened intellectuals believed that science had not
only disproved but replaced God; now science is one of the
major factors making the idea of God a serious subject again;
it is the scientists who seem to be taking the lead away from
the theologians." Perhaps it is time to usher out the
Age of Reason in favor of the Age of Reason and Faith.
I'll let
John Wesley have the final word, taken from the ending lines
of what is probably his last sermon, delivered January 17,
1791. I invite you to listen to the final couplet of the poem
which closed his sermon as it relates to science and faith.
It captures an understanding of faith (while not his intent)
that links us to scientific discovery.
The
things unknown to feeble sense,
Unseen by reason's glimmering ray,
With strong, commanding evidence,
Their heavenly origin display.
Faith lends its realizing light:
The clouds disperse, the shadows fly
The Invisible appears in sight,
And GOD is seen by mortal eye!
Science
and faith are not mutually exclusive. Each needs the other,
one to explore God's creation and the other to give meaning
and direction for the use of scientific discoveries. Faith
and science is not a choice, a conundrum perhaps!
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