Abstract
Science and religion seek an explanation for the basis of reality, but neither has the ability to objectively decide the ultimate question concerning God’s existence. Theism and atheism are both based on faith; and, in the absence of convincing arguments, proponents of each have polarized in the heat of debate. The essential ontological question about God has been overshadowed by irrelevant arguments. The literal truth of the Bible, as well as the effectiveness of science as a method of understanding natural phenomena, have become proxy issues that are completely irrelevant to the existence of God. Consilience, which posits the unitary nature and coherence of all knowledge (Knowledge is known truth), assures us that the reconciliation of science and religion is possible insofar as practitioners of each discover the truth in varying degrees. A key insight provided by John Dewey’s and Arthur Bentley’s theory of knowledge, as described in “Knowing and the Known”, is that the apprehension of truth by finite mind is always limited and imperfect. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that as scientists, philosophers and theologians make progress incrementally in the understanding of ultimate truth, the statements they each make should increasingly demonstrate elements of correspondence. Until then it is clear that agnosticism offers an honest starting point in consideration of the question whether the universe the sufficient cause of itself, or whether it bears an imprint of a transcendental cause from beyond its spatial and temporal dimensions.
I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.
Werner von Braun (2007)
My own view is that, while science and religion may seem different, they have many similarities, and should interact and enlighten each other.
Charles Townes (2005)
Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
Albert Einstein (1941)
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Notes
- 1.
Traditional approaches to religion involve a substantial degree of dogmatism, however. It would be hard to defend Planck’s position on a lack of dogmatism in religion. Most scientists also would deny that the goal of science is to “attain toward God”, but if God is real and is the ultimate truth then Planck is correct in this assertion.
- 2.
This difficulty will be addressed further in Chap. 3.
- 3.
In regard to the statement that, “we cannot scientifically disprove the existence of God”, it is important to note that it is notoriously difficult to prove the negation of a proposition. Moreover, rational empirical methods do not reach beyond the bounds of space-time. Science is necessarily practiced within the universe. The best science can do is look for an imprint of the transcendent on our universe, but again, failing to find such an imprint does not disprove the existence of God.
- 4.
Religion posits that God is immanent in the sense of being “intimately connected” to the universe, but simultaneously transcendent, by existing apart from it.
- 5.
It is willful ignorance!
- 6.
Science recognizes a hierarchy of the likely truth of statements about reality. Hypothesis, or conjecture, refer to an untested potential explanation of an observed phenomenon. At this stage, the proposed explanation is an inference that arises as a spontaneous insight that originates in the cognitive unconscious mind (see Chap. 7). Once experiment confirms the likely truth of the hypothesis it may be referred to as a theory, which is regarded as a reasonable explanation of a phenomenon, but subject to further validation by scientific replication and also subject to revision pending those future experimental results. Once an experimental result is validated by many different scientists and widely accepted as truth, the theory may be “elevated” to the level of a scientific law, as in Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation.
- 7.
Caution is warranted in “the knowing of truth”, however, because human apprehension of truth is always incomplete. This follows from the fact that what can be demonstrated by logical argument is only as valid as the premises of the argument, and what can be known on the basis of empirical inquiry is always subject to revision in light of new discoveries.
- 8.
The Truth refers to the totality of truth, i.e. Consilient Truth.
- 9.
In logic, the Law of Contradiction states that contradictory statements cannot both be true. This is related to the Law of the Excluded Middle, which holds that a statement is either true or false. That is, a statement is either true, or its denial is true.
- 10.
Magisterium (magisteria, pl.) refers to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. Gould uses it here with license to mean teachings in the inclusive sense.
- 11.
Consilient Truth is used in this book to refer to the totality of what can be known about logic and reality without contradiction. Consilient Truth is therefore coherent.
- 12.
The theory of the eternal multiverse is a proposal in the field of cosmology which states that the universe we can observe is merely one of an infinite number of universes each one of which is spawned by a preceding one. The eternal, self-replicating multiverse is necessarily infinite as well. The truth that can be known about the multiverse also must be infinite.
- 13.
World of Ideals or Perfect Forms is Plato’s conception of a reality different from the corrupted one in which humans live and within which we attempt to discover truth. See the text for further explanation.
- 14.
The words “ideas” and “intelligible” imply an act of mind, not a realm that exists in and of itself as the domain in which Truth exits eternally.
- 15.
In his 13 books on plane geometry, “The Elements”, Euclid defined a point as “that which has no part”, i.e. it lacks dimension but has location in the plane. It is fascinating that Euclid defined a point in a manner that is consistent with the rigorous understanding of the real number line that was developed approximately 2000 years later. Euclid defined the geometric concept of a line as “breadthless length”, i.e. it has length but no width. Therefore, any geometric figure that we draw is imperfect, but the idea of that figure exists in the World of Perfect Forms, Ideals, Ideas, etc.
- 16.
Scientists will readily admit that what has been revealed as truth through the empirical enterprise is incomplete, and certainly believers who hold to a dogmatic theological understanding of reality must admit that they do not know everything that can be known about God.
- 17.
If created, the universe was designed on the basis of some intelligence. Thus, there is a valid form of Intelligent Design, not corrupted by false agendas or false statements of creationists who seek to establish a false belief system in support of what they claim is the true one, i.e. the literal interpretation of the Bible.
- 18.
The Big Bang ” is the event described in modern cosmology as the beginning of what Einstein called Space-Time, the four-dimensional universe in which we live. It is believed that all matter and energy as well as the laws of physics were created and appeared at the inception of the Big Bang . At the moment of creation, the universe, all of its matter and energy were condensed into an infinitely small point which has been expanding ever since. The progression of Natural History involves the expansion of three-dimensional space and the progression of time. No one has yet explained how everything appeared at the inception of the Big Bang or from where it came.
- 19.
The laws of physics are expressed most efficiently not in words, but in the language of mathematics . What is the most essential expression of these laws? Is there a fundamental, irreducible, core of physical law expressed in mathematics from which all truth may be derived? Does consilient truth have a deep structure that provides the basis upon which all of reality exists?
- 20.
While neither rational empirical science nor dogmatic faith based religion is likely ever to prove or disprove the existence of God, philosophy is competent to decide this ultimate ontological question, as we will see in Chap. 8.
- 21.
Agnosticism is the philosophical perspective that the existence of God is indeterminate or, in the extreme, unknowable. The term is used here in the former sense to describe the position of an individual with an open mind about whether God is real or not.
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Di Rocco, R.J. (2018). The Polarization and Reconciliation of Science and Religion. In: Consilience, Truth and the Mind of God. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01869-6_2
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