okieinexile
Well-Known Member
Science, the religion
By Bobby Neal Winters
It seems to me from a plain way of looking at things that something is wrong with Man. I can say this safely because I live in Kansas, a Red state, so anything I say can be safely dismissed as simple raving.
As you may have heard, we’ve had a brouhaha in the State Board of Education, which in spite of the reams of newsprint generated, has not changed what has been taught in a single classroom by one iota.
This is all a part of the big battle in the war between science and religion; at least as it has been portrayed in the press. I will leave this part of the war to others because there is little I can say that hasn’t already been said. My purpose here is to point the reader toward another part of the battle field.
I have Christian brothers of good will disagree with me, but, again from my plain way of looking at things it seems to me that Man is a big, hairless chimpanzee. We look like chimps, we act like chimps, and, if I ever have a cause to doubt this, all I have to do is look around the Oval at the university where I work and see the students interacting. There, in their natural surroundings as it were, they look like nothing more than big, hairless chimps—with nose rings.
That having been established, at least to my plain way of looking at things, I have to ask how natural it is for a big, hairless chimp to sit in from of a keyboard with a cup of coffee beside him as he taps his thoughts into a computer. When I look at stories about the other chimps, the ones who aren’t so big and aren’t so hairless, this is not the sort of thing they are doing.
The conclusion I draw from this is that Man has somehow become dislodged from the place to which he was intended.
This thought, of course, is not original with me—not hardly. The author of the third chapter of Genesis knew it better than any of us and did so without the benefit of coffee or a computer. Man, who was created for Eden, has been barred from that place, his place in nature, in Creation. The Christian, whatever his view of scripture, would have to agree this is true.
Religion has many roles, but one of these is to remember the steps Man has taken away from his spot in Creation and to offer a balm for the pain each step has caused. Adam and Eve knew they were naked, were ashamed, and made themselves inadequate garments from fig leaves, but God in His mercy made them garments from animal skins. The ceremony of blood sacrifice, which comes to us made perfect in the form of the Eucharist, remembers this event.
It is in the act of offering comfort for our separation from Creation that religion, in its more traditional form, has science as a competitor.
While the word “science” does speak to a practice that has particular methods for studying the natural world, it is also used as a religion. The previous sentence is bound to draw rebuttals from those of a scientific bent. Religion requires faith, but science requires proof. The two could not possibly be more different. Let me reply to this.
Those of you who follow the debate on embryonic stem cell research are doubtless familiar with its prophesied benefits. In addition, we have all heard that clean, safe fusion power is only about thirty years in the future and know it is true because we have heard it for at least the last thirty years, and we know it must be true because they never change their story. It is always about thirty years away.
This is faith as the Apostle Paul defined it, the evidence of things unseen.
Of course the counter-arguments to this are easy. Faith in science is built upon its resume of success. We’ve got modern medicine, modern transportation, and modern agricultural methods which are all benefits that are unambiguously due to science. Those of us, who are on a daily asthma medication, drive to work every day, and are very well-fed, should not hesitate to ascribe these to science. However, let it also be noted that microbes are adapting to antibiotics, smog is filling the air, and farmland is being ruined by these modern techniques.
There is another round to this argument and that is science will fix all of these woes. And that is based...on faith.
In these times of great medical advance, it is the Cult of Medicine which is receiving the highest offerings. This is because it offers a promise to repair the first consequence of sin, Death entering into the world.
Science says, oh you have plaque building up in your coronary arteries. No problem we’ll just do a little angioplasty. You say your knees are going out? We’ll just stick in a couple of plastic ones. You say you are afraid to die?
Well, we don’t have anything to offer you now, BUT, if you let us experiment with these embryos, you might live forever. You’ll have everlasting life and be forever young—if you have the money and are willing to sacrifice these children.
On the other hand, Christianity says, you are going to die. You are going to die with absolute, mathematical certainty, whether you are rich or poor, powerful or weak, famous, infamous, or anonymous. You were made from dust and to dust you will return.
Oddly, this requires no faith to believe. Christianity does offer a balm for death. We’ve the promise of the Resurrection. We’ve a promise that we will be raised in Christ, but while many people have ideas about this none of the wise in the faith know what this means other than “I know in whom I have believed and am persuaded that his is able to keep that which I have given unto him against that day.”
Science, as a means of gathering and systematizing knowledge about the natural world, is a good, well-tested, and reliable part of our civilization. One might even call it one of our high points. Science, as a religion, offers means of short-circuiting our place in Creation.
As I conclude, I don’t want to leave the impression that I am anti-science, far from it, but...
But, in our struggle to keep religion from being taught in our science classes, we should not make science our religion instead.
(Bobby Winters is a Professor of Mathematics at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, a writer, and a Lay Speaker in the United Methodist Church. He is the author of Grandma Dipped Snuff and Confessions of an Ice Cream Socialist.)
By Bobby Neal Winters
It seems to me from a plain way of looking at things that something is wrong with Man. I can say this safely because I live in Kansas, a Red state, so anything I say can be safely dismissed as simple raving.
As you may have heard, we’ve had a brouhaha in the State Board of Education, which in spite of the reams of newsprint generated, has not changed what has been taught in a single classroom by one iota.
This is all a part of the big battle in the war between science and religion; at least as it has been portrayed in the press. I will leave this part of the war to others because there is little I can say that hasn’t already been said. My purpose here is to point the reader toward another part of the battle field.
I have Christian brothers of good will disagree with me, but, again from my plain way of looking at things it seems to me that Man is a big, hairless chimpanzee. We look like chimps, we act like chimps, and, if I ever have a cause to doubt this, all I have to do is look around the Oval at the university where I work and see the students interacting. There, in their natural surroundings as it were, they look like nothing more than big, hairless chimps—with nose rings.
That having been established, at least to my plain way of looking at things, I have to ask how natural it is for a big, hairless chimp to sit in from of a keyboard with a cup of coffee beside him as he taps his thoughts into a computer. When I look at stories about the other chimps, the ones who aren’t so big and aren’t so hairless, this is not the sort of thing they are doing.
The conclusion I draw from this is that Man has somehow become dislodged from the place to which he was intended.
This thought, of course, is not original with me—not hardly. The author of the third chapter of Genesis knew it better than any of us and did so without the benefit of coffee or a computer. Man, who was created for Eden, has been barred from that place, his place in nature, in Creation. The Christian, whatever his view of scripture, would have to agree this is true.
Religion has many roles, but one of these is to remember the steps Man has taken away from his spot in Creation and to offer a balm for the pain each step has caused. Adam and Eve knew they were naked, were ashamed, and made themselves inadequate garments from fig leaves, but God in His mercy made them garments from animal skins. The ceremony of blood sacrifice, which comes to us made perfect in the form of the Eucharist, remembers this event.
It is in the act of offering comfort for our separation from Creation that religion, in its more traditional form, has science as a competitor.
While the word “science” does speak to a practice that has particular methods for studying the natural world, it is also used as a religion. The previous sentence is bound to draw rebuttals from those of a scientific bent. Religion requires faith, but science requires proof. The two could not possibly be more different. Let me reply to this.
Those of you who follow the debate on embryonic stem cell research are doubtless familiar with its prophesied benefits. In addition, we have all heard that clean, safe fusion power is only about thirty years in the future and know it is true because we have heard it for at least the last thirty years, and we know it must be true because they never change their story. It is always about thirty years away.
This is faith as the Apostle Paul defined it, the evidence of things unseen.
Of course the counter-arguments to this are easy. Faith in science is built upon its resume of success. We’ve got modern medicine, modern transportation, and modern agricultural methods which are all benefits that are unambiguously due to science. Those of us, who are on a daily asthma medication, drive to work every day, and are very well-fed, should not hesitate to ascribe these to science. However, let it also be noted that microbes are adapting to antibiotics, smog is filling the air, and farmland is being ruined by these modern techniques.
There is another round to this argument and that is science will fix all of these woes. And that is based...on faith.
In these times of great medical advance, it is the Cult of Medicine which is receiving the highest offerings. This is because it offers a promise to repair the first consequence of sin, Death entering into the world.
Science says, oh you have plaque building up in your coronary arteries. No problem we’ll just do a little angioplasty. You say your knees are going out? We’ll just stick in a couple of plastic ones. You say you are afraid to die?
Well, we don’t have anything to offer you now, BUT, if you let us experiment with these embryos, you might live forever. You’ll have everlasting life and be forever young—if you have the money and are willing to sacrifice these children.
On the other hand, Christianity says, you are going to die. You are going to die with absolute, mathematical certainty, whether you are rich or poor, powerful or weak, famous, infamous, or anonymous. You were made from dust and to dust you will return.
Oddly, this requires no faith to believe. Christianity does offer a balm for death. We’ve the promise of the Resurrection. We’ve a promise that we will be raised in Christ, but while many people have ideas about this none of the wise in the faith know what this means other than “I know in whom I have believed and am persuaded that his is able to keep that which I have given unto him against that day.”
Science, as a means of gathering and systematizing knowledge about the natural world, is a good, well-tested, and reliable part of our civilization. One might even call it one of our high points. Science, as a religion, offers means of short-circuiting our place in Creation.
As I conclude, I don’t want to leave the impression that I am anti-science, far from it, but...
But, in our struggle to keep religion from being taught in our science classes, we should not make science our religion instead.
(Bobby Winters is a Professor of Mathematics at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, a writer, and a Lay Speaker in the United Methodist Church. He is the author of Grandma Dipped Snuff and Confessions of an Ice Cream Socialist.)
I think all that you've stated in both the first and second halves of this piece goes to show that indeed science is not a religion. Yes, you say
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