A Creed for the Third Millennium

"Give these pages to the world, and there shall be another mighty religion, another priesthood, another Us and another Them, one set against the other. In a hundred years, a million will have died for the words we hold in our hands; in a thousand years, tens of millions. All for this paper."

(Because I've now heard 'non-overlapping magisteria' one too many times in recent weeks.)

Who knew? Certainly not I, back when I decided to study science. Or the person I was when I was a professional scientist. I even managed to make it through graduate school without getting seriously immersed in (or even really being aware of) the idea that science might be at war with religion. Or that the idea of 'God' was something on which a scientist would/should ever be pressured to comment. All this I learned from the blogosphere. (sigh)

In my head things are a little simpler. (And devoid of Latin.)

• Spirituality - The individual experience of the Unknown. The curiosity, the anomalous, the wonder, the introspection, the yearning. The subjective experience, and its consequences.
• Religion - The communal enterprise with respect to the Unknown. What Man chooses to share with his fellows. The objective experience - what is done with/for/by others with respect to the Unknown.

Having defined religion thusly (and distinctly from spirituality), it is (only) now possible to compare science and religion. Gould's idea of the relationship between science and religion - called non-overlapping magisteria - has been summarized as follows... "[T]he magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value." I think that this is an absurd statement, for reasons you may be able to infer from my above description of religion.

Religion was the precursor of Science in Man's attempt to explain the past and predict the future. Because Man benefits by perceiving Order rather than Chaos, those explanations which most satisfactorily explain the past and enable successful predictions about the future survive. When (and where) Man had insufficient facts with which to explain or predict, he (historically) sought to establish Order in his perceptions via the simplest route - a single source, generally conceived in the image Man knew best... his own. A God, whose motivations and desires (being similar to Man's) might be understood, and having been understood, might be acted upon in a way that would benefit Man. Because Man also benefits by being part of a cohesive social unit, and cohesion is defined in large part by shared beliefs, it behooved Man to instruct his fellows and control the behavioral cohesion of his social unit.

This has been the historical function of Religion (the communal enterprise) - to explain and predict, and instruct and control. To perceive 'explain and predict' as the sole purview of Science is to ignore the entire historical context of Religion, and the foundation by which Religion holds its ability to instruct and control. (It also fails to acknowledge those aspects of human experience that (mainstream) Science has not (yet) adequately explained. Like it or not, Religion still offers an explanation for many of these experiences.)

Yet, to function as it was intended, Science cannot be concerned with exerting social control. Control requires suppressing contradiction and stifling contention in favor of maintaining cohesion. Such is contrary to the nature and spirit of true Science. This means that Science, though it can inform us, cannot and should not be held up as the final arbiter of what human beings should do. Science can say 'If you do X, then everything we have observed to date tells us that Y will happen as a result." But Science must stop there, and remain our servant in that respect, and Scientists must never become another set of masters to whom we defer. Science cannot give us a creed, set in stone, without ceasing to be an enterprise of inquiry.

As the explanations offered by Religion are challenged and surpassed by those offered by Science, it becomes possible to challenge the instructions and controls passed down by Religion as well. In many areas this is overdue. Yet this does not mean that any idea put forth by Religion as a moral restraint or control is necessarily a bad idea. It simply means that the dialogue about what is right and what is wrong will have to continually evolve as humanity wrestles still more self-determining power from the realm of the Unknown. Scientists should be prepared to engage in that dialogue, but without assuming the demeanor of conquerors or kings.