One day, while at work, I made a joke referencing evolution. My coworker laughed at it, but then turned solemn and said, “But seriously, you don’t actually believe in evolution, right?” The question took me aback and sparked a half-hour-long discussion about science and its place, or lack thereof, in religion. The problem my coworker had was he belonged to a Christian denomination that practices biblical literalism. This is the idea that the Holy Bible used by Christians was word-for-word inspired by the Holy Spirit, and is therefore infallibly correct (note that there are other versions of this idea and not all Christians who consider themselves biblical literalists will agree with the definition my coworker was using). Because of this, he was obligated to believe Earth was indeed created in six days by God and on the seventh day God rested and all was as it ever would be. Genesis says so and Genesis is infallible. Many of us have probably had a similar discussion and I think it is important to take a moment to look at the issue. There isn’t sufficient space in one opinion column to cover every detail and aspect of this issue, so you can expect me to cover different parts of it in the coming weeks. Today we will look at a basic overview of the problem.
The first thing to understand is the purpose of religion and science. Religion is a way of looking at the world, understanding why it is the way it is and the basis of practitioners’ philosophies. Religion answers the “why?” questions. Why are we here? We are here because some Creator made us. Why is there death? There is death in order to pass on into one of the myriad of hereafters religion offers. Science, on the other hand, is mainly interested in the “how?” questions. Yes, many scientists are also concerned with the philosophical reasons for nature and existence, but when we reached that point in my freshman biology class, it was more of an open-ended question. Our exam did not feature a section asking why cells divide. Science is only concerned with how division happens. How are we here? We are here as a clump of matter bound by gravity to a grand, floating biosphere in space. How is it that we die? We die by means of one of our many organ systems failing in some way, causing a chain reaction which ends with oxygen no longer being able to circulate around inside our bodies. This then causes a major systems failure and ultimately termination.
So, then, it is not hard to see why many religions have no trouble implementing science and religion. Religion explains the reasons why some creative force did the things it did. Science then explains the ways by which that creative force achieved them. This is probably the way many readers incorporate the two and there is no problem with that. But there is still a problem.
Sometimes, as in the case with my coworker, the religious explanation and the scientific explanation do not mesh. In his case, religion told him to believe the Bible because it was wholly the true word of God. What it said—even beyond the philosophical and theological—was also held to be true. Many “how?” questions are answered within and, in the case of Genesis’ creation story, the answers do not fit with science’s answer. Some religions make compromises to explain the disagreement. For example, Catholics are allowed to believe the Bible, while still the inspired word of God, is only infallible in terms of faith and morals. Anything beyond those categories may fall to human error. The Ten Commandments, being a list of prescribed morals, are infallible. The creation story, being a historical account, is subject to human use of allegory and ancient explanations for natural occurrences.
If a religion offers no such compromise, we must understand there will be practitioners of said religion who choose to side with the religious explanation over the scientific one. And that is okay, provided one thing: Those who do so must understand why they stand at odds with other people, especially many rigorous scientists, and discuss and debate with them accordingly. Even in science there is room for people who disagree with mainstream theories. Adding more room for people who disagree because of their religious beliefs should not be too hard, as long as we keep things mature and intellectual.
Of course problems arise with these interpretations of religion and science coexisting in our society, one of the biggest is whether or not public schools should teach evolution and creative design. This is one of the subjects I will cover next week; there is not sufficient room to cover it here. I only wanted to start the discussion today. Thank you for reading, and look forward to next week’s column when we will get into the nitty gritty of the issue.
Tom is a senior majoring in religious studies. This week’s article was prompted by a reader’s email. If you have any suggestions for topics or any feedback, please email opinion@dailycardinal.com.
