Two Dimensions of Why?

I've been listening to an interview with Dr John Polkinghorne, particle physicist and theologian, and co-director of the Psychology and Religion Research Group at Cambridge University. His conclusion is that "under the skin, science or religion are cousins in the search for truth". While science is useful for explaining events, there's another dimension to reality.

Ask a scientist, as a scientist, all that he or she can tell you about music and they'll say it's neural response; things firing off in our brains to the impact of soundwaves hitting the ear-drum. And of course that's true, and in its own way it's worth knowing. But there's much more to music. There is a deep mystery about music; that that succession of sounds in time can speak to us, and I think speak to us truly, of a timeless form of beauty.

He also gives the following metaphor of how science and religion work together to make sense of the world:

I mean we all know you can ask both the how question and the why question. The kettle's boiling because burning gas heats the water. The kettle's boiling, because I want to make a cup of tea and would you like to have one? I don't have to choose between those two answers, they're both true. And in fact if I'm going to understand the mysterious events of the boiling kettle, I need both answers. Similarly I need both science and religion. I need to be two-eyed when I look at the world.

Rethinking Repenting

So here's something i didn't realise. Apparently the word repent (used so frequently in the Christian vocabulary) is derived, grammatically speaking, from the same word as pensive - meaning thoughtful.

So, the word repent (whatever connotations it may have picked up over the years) actually means to re-think, or to think again. It struck me that this is what we do in science. When we obtain new evidence or data, we rethink our hypothesis - our view of the situation.

Biblically, there are several examples of people who re-thought their viewpoint - on the basis of Jesus. Matthew (the gospel writer) and St Paul are the first that come to mind - although Jesus's disciple Thomas could also qualify. While these men weren't officially scientists, their new conclusions were based on the evidence presented to them.

Science and Faith - Together Again

One of my primary motivations for putting together this blog was to dispell the myth of any non-compatibility between science and faith.

It seems that there are many people also of this view. So much so, that Evolution Weekend will be celebrated in many churches around the globe. This year, the weekend (Feb 13-15) marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. It is also described as

...an opportunity for serious discussion and reflection on the relationship between religion and science, and to demonstrate that religious people from many faiths and locations understand that evolution is sound science and poses no problems to their faith.

The website for the event also contains a clergy letter signed by 11,000 Christian clergy. The weekend also aims to make clear that those claiming people must choose between religion and science are creating a false dichotomy. Their aim is also to demonstrate that religion and science have much to offer each other.

Bravo!

4 Circle Diagram

One of the great things about science (and also engineering) is the diagram. So it's no surprise that when people ask MIT science graduate James Choung about God, he explains using a diagram...

God and Gravity

I was forwarded this the other day. It's by a guy called Jim Taylor

..if I were going to worship something other than God, I think I would choose gravity.

Gravity does more than just drop apples on Isaac Newton’s head. It causes water to flow downhill, carving ravines and canyons. It causes cliffs to crumble. It wraps a thin skin of atmosphere around the earth. It holds the earth - and the other planets - in stable orbit around the sun.

Yet gravity surrounds us, envelops us, so completely, so universally, that most of us are completely unaware of its presence.

Which is, now that I start to think about it, a pretty good description of how most of us perceive God, too

Similarly (though a few thousand years earlier) St Paul, in his letter to the church in Rome, writes "Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made."

How He Did It

Astronomer Guy Consolmagno was recently interviewed as part of ABC's Encounter programme. He was asked about 'religion and science' and made the following remark...

One of my quick answers is that the Bible tells me that God made the universe but it is my science that tells me how he did it!

The episode covered a number of areas, and also interviewed 2008 Templeton Prize winner Michal Heller. Meanwhile, Guy Consolmagno was also asked about being a religious person embedded in the scientific world...

There absolutely is this commonality and you forget sometimes but modern science really is fundamentally based on religious ideas. It's based on the idea that the universe does make sense, that there are laws to be found. You know, a lot of religions thought that things happened arbitrarily, because you know the god of thunder made the thunder fall, the god of crops made the crops grow. And Christianity says no there is only one God and he made the universe in an orderly way and he gave us the intelligence to be able to figure it out. But even more than that: our religion believes that, you know as the Bible puts it, God so loved the world that he sent his Son, it was primarily out of love of this creation that he found was good. So to love creation and to become more intimate with it by studying it as a scientist is a religious act, it is an act of worship. It is why I get up in the morning.

Climate Change and God

Believe or not, there are still a few people out there who think that climate change and global warming are just a natural occurences - that 27 billion tonnes of annual greenhouse emissions have no effect on the atmosphere.

As ludicrous as that sounds, it got me thinking as to why someone might be so attached to denial. My best guess is that it's because there are consequences in admitting there is global warming and climate change. Consequences such as admitting our past actions have harmed our environment; and changing the way society operates (in order to avoid future damage). Possibly the most difficult consequence is that of thinking beyond mere self-interest and considering the effects of our actions on others.

In thinking about this, I realised the parallel to the situation with Jesus and becoming a Christian. It involves owning up to being less than perfect (and being forgiven). It involves making an effort to be better in the future (with God's help). Also, it often involves being less self-obsessed and materialistic than might otherwise be the case.

For some, this is too much to confront. For some, it seems easier to construct a barrier of tenuous logic and rationalisation, rather than face the possibility of an inconvenient truth.