Today’s Post
Last week we moved from the ‘terrain of synthesis’, the areas potentially common to science and religion as identified by Teilhard and Paul Davies, to the ‘middle ground’ addressed by Jonathan Sacks: that occupied by the human person.
This week we will go a little deeper into exploring the potential of this ground to personal human growth.
The Road to Synthesis
Sacks moves from his review of the history between science and religion to address what he sees has resulted from the “crumbling of the arch between Jerusalem and Athens” and the need for rediscovery of the ‘terrain of synergy’.
“Bad things happen when religion ceases to hold itself answerable to empirical reality, when it creates devastation and cruelty on earth for the sake of salvation in heaven. And bad things happen when science declares itself the last word on the human condition and engages in social or bio-engineering, treating humans as objects rather than as subjects, and substitutes cause and effect for reflection, will and choice.
Science and religion have their own logic, their own way of asking questions and searching for answers. This is not an argument for compartmentalization, seeing science and religion as did (Stephen Jay) Gould as ‘non overlapping magisteria’, two entirely separate worlds. They do indeed overlap because they are about the same world within which we live, breathe and have our being. It is instead an argument for conversation, hopefully even integration. Religion needs science because we cannot (find God) in the world if we do not understand the world. If we try to, the result will be magic or misplaced supernaturalism.”
He goes on to echo Davies’ observation that science, as it does not address the phenomenon of rising complexity in the universe, is poorly equipped to include the human person in its deliberation.
“By the same token, science needs religion, or at the very least some philosophical understanding of the human condition and our place within the universe, for each fresh item of knowledge and each new accession of power raises the question of how it should be used, and for that we need another way of thinking.”
He offers an articulation of the “Terrain of Synergy” that we addressed last week.
“It is precisely the space between the world that is and the world that ought to be that is, or should be, the arena of conversation between science and religion, and each should be open to the perceptions of the other. The question is neither, “Does Darwinism refute religion?” nor, “Does religion refute Darwinism”? Rather: “How does each shed light on the other, and “What new insights does Darwinism offer religion?”, and “What insights does religion offer to Darwinism?”
Recognizing the “Terrain of Synergy” is much more than a philosophical goal. While it is a worthy objective to better understand where we fit into the ‘scheme of things’, we are still faced with the need to unpack this understanding into a way of personal life in which
“(in general) religion and science, far from being opposed, are on the same side of the table, using their distinctive methods to help us better understand humanity, nature, and our place in the scheme of things.”
Reflecting Thomas Jefferson’s reinterpretation of Jesus’ teaching (Part 1 of “So Who And What Was Jesus’), he goes on to say
“Outside religion there is no secure alternative base for the unconditional source of worth that in the West has come from the idea that we are each in God’s image. Though many have tried to create a secular substitute, none has ultimately succeeded. This has been demonstrated four times in the modern world when an attempt was made to create a social order on secular lines: The French Revolution, Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany and Communist China. When there is a bonfire of the sanctities, lives are lost.
Science cannot locate freedom, because the word is one of causal relationships. A scientific law is one that links one physical phenomenon to another without the intervention of will and choice. To the extent that there is a science of human behavior, to that extent there is an implicit denial of the freedom of human behavior. That is precisely what Spinoza, Marx and Freud were arguing, that freedom is an illusion. But if freedom is an illusion, then so is human dignity.”
The Next Post
This week we took a deeper look at the ‘terrain of synergy’ in which the different but complementary methods and insights of science and religion might overlap. Three weeks ago we looked at how Paul Davies and Teilhard offer two very clear examples of thinking about synergy between science and religion, and this week and the last we saw how Jonathan Sacks looked at it from the perspective of the ‘center’ of this terrain, which is where most of us live our daily lives.
Next week we will build upon Sack’s insights, much closer to home, to look at how this movement toward ‘synergy’ between such things as left-right brain thinking, science-religion coherence and general overcoming of daily ‘dualisms’ can lead to what Richard Rohr refers to as “whatever reconnects (re-religio) our parts to the whole”.