Chris Richardson
May 21, 2003
for S. Crampton
INTR 342
A Modern Synthesis of Science with Eastern Christianity
Introduction
Since the dawn of consciousness, humans have strived to understand
the world around them and their place in it. From the first naturalistic surveys
of the flora and fauna of the earth painted on the rocky walls of fire-lit caves
millennia ago to the enormously complex investigations into quantum physics
ventured at today’s particle accelerators, human curiosity has known no
bounds. By way of organizing the countless questions posed and answers sought,
broad conceptions of "science," "reason," "philosophy,"
and "religion" have been created and debated by humankind for centuries.
Beginning in earnest during the Age of Reason following the Renaissance, two
distinct ways of understanding the world seemed to form. On one hand, understanding
could be realized by rational thought, reason, and the applications of science.
On the other, understanding could be achieved by faith in some divine presence,
the application of religion. A philosophical conflict quickly developed between
the two camps: what should reign supreme in human understanding of the world—science
or religion? The debate had no clear-cut answer, and only tautological methods
of prioritizing one over the other.
Various ways of relating science and religion have been proposed
and adopted in the past century or two. As summarized by Ian Barbour in his
Religion and Science, philosophers concerned with the interaction (or lack thereof)
of science and religion have been left with four broad options: Conflict, Independence,
Dialogue, and Integration. The divisions proceed from fundamental ideas about
how science and religion, in very general terms, operate and work in the world.
Conceptions separating science and religion philosophically, arguing that they
serve different purposes, answer different questions, and satisfy different
needs lead to the Independence or Dialogue positions. Conceptions holding that
science and religion should operate (epistemologically and philosophically)
in basically the same manner lead to the Conflict or Integration models . At
issue for philosophy, from the most formal seminars in leading universities
to the most basic ideas of personal morality conceived by individuals world-wide,
is achieving a supreme understanding of humanity and its role in the world.
Should this understanding encompass both science and religion (Dialogue and
Integration) or favor one or the other rather than some synthesis of both (Independence
and Conflict)? How a specific philosophy answers these sets of essential questions
determines how science and religion will interact and the role of each in a
greater understanding of the world.
It seems to me that the most complete and satisfying understanding
of the world must take into account both scientific ideas of reason and rational
progress in synthesis with some religious conception of a divine designer, infinite
in power and scope. The reasons for this insistence for both shall become clear
in the following pages. Science, as I will take it for the remainder of this
essay, encompasses the various fields known as physics, biology, chemistry,
mathematics and most of philosophy. It is a rational system based on a combination
of reason, intellect, and empirical observations. Religion, as I will use it,
refers to a specific outlook on Christianity developed in the eastern church.
I’m not basing an argument on Orthodoxy itself, but rather the primary
tenets that flow from an Eastern outlook on the Trinity, to be discussed in
more detail below. But how should the two be related? The most logical and harmonious
understanding does not come under the auspices of the Integration model, but
rather a modified Dialogue framework. When appropriate (when situations/problems
have distinct religious and scientific responses that must both be considered),
the interaction would fall under Barbour’s Dialogue; questions pertaining
to either religion or science but not both would mandate the Independence view.
The result is a complementary synthesis of scientific and religious ideas. Neither
assumes superiority or subjugation over or under the other. Alone, each provides
only a partial understanding of the world. Together, eastern Christianity and
scientific knowledge compose a much richer and complete understanding of humanity
and our place in the world.
Why Integration is Impossible
Philosophers searching for a model of complete integration between
the ideas of science and those of religion have always come up lacking. Theories
pretending to totally assimilate one understanding into the other have never
had the necessary appeal to be widely adopted. The reason for this failing,
however, stems from the fact that science and religion, when applied to the
same problem, will always be in some sort of conflict. At issue is the question
of whether science and religion operate under the same models, paradigms, epistemologies,
and constraints (what will henceforth be referred to as domains), or separate.
If one considers them in separate domains, then by default integration is impossible:
in response to the same problem or condition, science and religion ask different
questions in different ways and end up with different answers. This is clearly
not integration. If one considers them in the same domain, the issue becomes
more complicated, though the result is the same.
Acting in the same domain, asking the same questions in the same
manner, science and religion have never been able to exist in harmony. Historically,
struggles between the scientific community and religious communities (especially
the Roman Catholic Church) have occurred because of the "ego" of the
scientific community. The driving goals of science are progress in technology
and increase in knowledge about humans and their world. Implicit in this outlook
is the idea that no scientific question or problem can remain forever unsolved,
that there is no barrier too tall or gulf too broad for science to conquer.
But when religion, specifically the concept of a divine entity, is phrased in
a scientific context (or science in a religious context), when it acts in the
scientific domain, suddenly an impenetrable barrier appears. By absolute definition
, at some level God is transcendent beyond all human comprehension and explanation;
it is this transcendence, this ultimate power, which makes religion sacred for
its faithful. At the foot of God, science has met its match; it can go no farther.
Science has only barely begun to approach the barrier of the divine in thought
or experiment. But while science is preoccupied with more solvable puzzles,
it is deeply aware that at some point, God will be the final frontier—a
frontier that can never be tamed by reason or explained by empirical evidence
bound by an intelligent theory of even infinite complexity. This awareness leads
to conflict—science must destroy religion to ensure its own ultimate survival.
Self-preservation is the strongest human emotion and instinct; as science and
religion are both human ideas, this instinct is transferred and applied throughout
the community. As science attacks religion, threatening to explain all of God’s
"special" actions, religion must fight back, in a sense, framing more
and more questions that science cannot attempt to answer, constantly reestablishing
itself as the right, the good, and the ultimate explanation for human existence
. Thus, in self-defense, religion progressively moves farther and farther from
the domain of science; once again, integration is clearly not the result. All
of this is not to say that science and religion can never coexist in a larger
understanding, only that they must be kept philosophically separate and allowed
to function in distinct ways.
Synthesis
Creating a world-view consistent both with the teachings and beliefs
of a particular religious community and the ever-changing models and theories
of an independent scientific community must begin with a clear understanding
of a religious tradition accepting of a complementary role alongside science
and reason. I’ve chosen the eastern view of Christianity because of my
familiarity with Christian traditions in general and my belief that the western
view (primarily the positions of the Roman Catholic Church, but these have been
extended to most western protestant faiths as well) tries too hard to integrate
itself with science, compromising the integrity of both the faith and the science.
An essay by Fr. Michael Azkoul on the differences between the Orthodox and Roman
Catholic Churches frames the eastern position on science and reason well:
Following the Holy Fathers, Orthodoxy uses science and philosophy
to defend and explain her Faith…[but] she does not build on the results
of philosophy and science. The Church does not seek to reconcile faith and reason.
She makes no effort to prove by logic or science what Christ gave His followers
to believe. If physics or biology or chemistry or philosophy lends support to
the teachings of the Church, she does not refuse them. However, Orthodoxy is
not intimidated by man’s intellectual accomplishments. She does not bow
to them and change the Christian Faith to make it consistent with the results
of human thought and science.
This, I think, is the correct attitude that a religious tradition
should have toward science. Science is not seen as a threat, nor as a true ally,
but as a neighbor. When and where appropriate, science is invited over for the
cookout, allowed to borrow the power drill, and asked to feed the dog during
a long weekend out of town. But the relationship is not familiar; there is no
marriage of ideas, no compromise of essential positions, and no change in central
religious tenets to fit the current whims of science.
The reasons for this attitude towards science, perfect for the
modified Dialogue I’ve suggested, lie primarily in the division of knowledge
created by eastern thought. Knowledge is differentiated into "divine or
that which is ‘from above’ and secular…or lower." This distinction
parallels the idea that objects that may be thought about fall into two categories:
the Uncreated and created. As Metallinos writes:
…only the Holy Trinity is Uncreated. The universe (or universes) in which
our existence is realized, is created. Faith is knowledge of the Uncreated,
and science is knowledge of the created. Therefore, they are two different types
of knowledge, each having its own method and tools of inquiry.
Distinctions of this sort, between secular thoughts and actions and religious/faithful
thoughts and actions, are a common theme in scripture, one of the primary bases
of Christian thought. (As a common example often cited in battles of church
and state: "Render unto Caesar the things that be Caesar’s, and render
unto God the things that be God’s.")
Conceptions of the divine in eastern Christianity are entirely unaffected by
the demands of pure reason and rational thought so inherent to the scientific
process. Azkoul illustrates the costs of the alternative (as seen in the western
Church): "Roman Catholicism…places a high value on human reason. Its
history shows the consequence of that trust….[science] has radically altered
the theology, mysteries, and institutions of the Christian religion." To
a pragmatist, such fickleness in religious traditions (in the sense that they
are constantly conformed to new scientific and philosophic models) can have
a profound effect on how "satisfied" an individual is with his religion.
As traditions change, and as these changes are observed throughout a lifetime
or learned about through history, individuals practicing western Christianity
are left to wonder whether the sacraments that they celebrate and the saints
they venerate truly represent a pure connection with the divine. Liturgical
rites and practices lose some of James’ "immediate luminousness"
(their ability to produce a satisfying sense of awe, wonder, and connection
to the divine) when the believer realizes they can be changed radically, or
swept away entirely, by a church council or an aging pontiff’s senile encyclical
(as these are both subject to future correction and amendment, they remain fallible
creations of the human mind).
Western Christianity often makes such changes in response to broader
(based in the corporal world) philosophical movements rather than new fundamental
discoveries about essential texts, places, or people. To again use James’
terminology, "philosophical reasonableness" in the western conception
of Christianity is based mostly on reason, logic, and science; when these qualities
change, the religion must change, or it doesn’t "work" as well
from a pragmatic point of view. This is an unfortunate catch-22 for the west:
If changes are made in response to the outside world, immediate luminousness
is sacrificed. If changes are not made, then philosophical reasonableness is
lost. There is very little middle ground, and often the balancing act results
in long periods of maintaining the status quo (and artificial attempts to conform
science and reason to the current religious traditions, resulting in ugly conflicts
with the scientific domain) followed by short periods of rapid and spectacular
change. While this has been a mostly effective way to operate for hundreds of
years, it certainly cannot be characterized as harmonious. Also, the challenges
to a religion entrenched in reason from the scientific community have never
come as quickly or pointedly as those arising in the next few centuries.
Many of the flaws seen in western Christianity today and the analogous advantages
of Eastern interpretations can be traced back to fundamental differences in
the two traditions’ views on the Trinity, the union of the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. Eastern theology never bound God in human/rational terms, describing
only his energeai (energies) in the world and holding that the divine unity
was beyond human comprehension. Western theologians (chiefly Augustine and the
legions that followed his thought), on the other hand, dealt with the Trinity
by first considering the unified "God" (attempting, and but only partially
succeeding, to frame him in human, rational, reasoned terms) and then describing
his three manifestations in the world—this is the origin of Western dependence
on reason and a faulty attempt at integration with science.
Faced with only a partially successful attempt to frame God in
human language, western Christians tried to encourage some of this personal
mysticism. During the Renaissance, the Catholic Church was the primary patron
of the arts; what language could not convey, painting and religious imagery
might. (Easterners, of course, already had their icons.) In more modern times
(the past century) there has been a resurgence in the western tradition of a
movement away from a purely reasoned account of God. James often advocates the
highly ineffable and irrational experience of God so central to the pragmatic
conception—a prime vehicle for immediate luminousness. One of the most
celebrated Catholic scholars of the era, Thomas Merton, constantly emphasizes
in his writings the importance of experiencing God beyond the confines of rational
thought and language. He encourages western Christians to move out of the logical
framework created by formal religion and attempt to commune with God in a more
mystical "contemplation." This is asking a lot—to commune with
God westerners must follow the traditions and reasoned interpretations of Scripture
as mandated by Rome (or whatever protestant center fulfils the analogous position)
through programmed religious practices and simultaneously cast aside all conscious
reason and thought and try and experience God through contemplation. Again,
philosophical reasonableness comes at the expense of immediate luminousness.
Central to eastern theologies, however, is an idea that contemplation
and meditation could bring an individual into a deeper, more personal contact
with God Himself, if not a contact that could be easily described. As Metallinos
writes of the east, "the believer, moving within [the domain of the Uncreated]
is not called to learn something metaphysically or to accept something logically,
but to experience God by being in communion with him." He then goes further:
"In Orthodoxy, authority is found in experience." How simply a parallel
statement for science may be created! In Science, authority is found in experience.
Metallinos writes of supernatural contact with the divine—experience and
knowledge of the Uncreated. Science is based on natural contact with the secular
world—experience and knowledge of the created.
Until this point I’ve concentrated primarily on the characteristics a good
religion should have to be used in a complementary synthesis with science—I
want to take a few moments to touch briefly on the other end of the spectrum.
In some ways, it’s been appropriate for me to keep "science"
and "reason" as very general terms—they represent everything
in the world not divine, and as such, it’s quite difficult to pin science
and reason down to essential tenets and fundamental principles. But it should
be obvious that not all scientific outlooks are compatible with even a complementary
synthesis; certain philosophies such as scientific materialism (holding that
the scientific method is the only path to all knowledge and matter is "the
fundamental reality" in our world) absolutely refuse any conception of
science. The primary requirements of science in this synthesis are a willingness
to stay limited to the "created" domain and room for some conception
of God. These limiting criteria are much easier for a science to fulfill, as
it needn’t be concerned with ideas of immediate luminousness and moral
helpfulness to be satisfying in a pragmatic sense.
By way of one very useful example, consider process thought as
a scientific framework. A central idea, that God is a viable force in the world,
has been taken to heart by different process philosophers in different ways,
but normally credits God with providing the purpose and mechanism to creation
as well as stipulating that God is "influenced by events in the world."
Process philosophy traditionally favors the Integration mode of interaction,
but can be understood as Dialogue as well. The necessary transformation is making
the distinction that the scientific conception of God is what is altered by
scientific knowledge and inquiry. (Much of process philosophy can be read without
making this judgment, and while it works for the time being, it will eventually
fail the integration challenges outlined earlier.)
The most essential and least problematic (in the sense that semantic
separations are not necessary) elements of process thought grow out of what
I feel is the "proper" interpretation of the older "God of the
Gaps" theory. A popular notion following the enlightenment was that science
could explain much of the natural world, but that there were certain "gaps"
in the theory that were controlled by God. As more and more gaps were closed
by science, it began to look like the need for religion would soon vanish, causing
those wanting a harmony of religion and science to look elsewhere for a uniting
philosophy. The theory still holds true, however, if one simply assumes that
while we may only view God in the gaps, the energy we see there is present everywhere,
underlying everything.
The two complementary sectors of a unified world-view, the two opposing types
of knowledge, the Uncreated and created, the Divine and secular are thus inherently
philosophically separate, but mechanically parallel. Metallinos draws out some
of these similarities; particularly important is his description of how knowledge
is transferred:
The adoption of conclusions or findings of a scientific branch by non-specialists
(i.e. those who are unable to experimentally examine the research of the specialists)
is based on the trust of the specialists’ credibility. Otherwise there
would be no scientific progress. The same holds true for the science of faith.
The empirical knowledge of the Saints, Prophets, Apostles, Fathers and Mothers
of all ages is adopted and founded upon the same trust.
While Metallinos argues that both eastern faith traditions and reason are both
based on experiences, he still keeps the fundamental distinction about the types
of experiences and knowledge at work. He would follow Barbour in the comparison
of scientific and religious structures of paradigms and the importance of theories
and models in each, especially the simplified composite structure presented
in class (the cycle of hypotheses, models, experience, intuition, hypotheses,
models…) .
That the priorities of science and religion, and the pathways
that each entity uses to progress, are so similar, and yet the entities themselves
so separate, leads quite nicely into the dialogue position. Any consideration
(investigations into the character of some object or an answer to some question)
can involve both types of inquiry: "Nothing excludes the co-existence of
faith and science when faith is not imaginary and science does not falsify its
positive character with the use of metaphysics." Though full and harmonious
integration may not be possible, a very useful, satisfying, complete dialogue
between the right religious tradition and most scientific philosophies may easily
produce a harmonious, complementary, synthesis to grant a better understanding
of humanity and its place in the world.