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Ask Questions Quietly and Wisely
How to Talk to Scientists and “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him” (Proverbs 18:13). Richard D. Doctor
In
a popular undergraduate textbook from the late 1960’s the distinguished
anthropologist Anthony Wallace pronounced the death of the gods as follows: “the
evolutionary future of religion is extinction. Belief in supernatural beings and
in supernatural forces that affect nature without obeying nature’s laws will
erode and become only an interesting historical memory ... [As] a cultural
trait, belief in supernatural powers is doomed to die out, all over the world,
as a result of the increasing adequacy and diffusion of scientific knowledge ...
the process is inevitable.”{1} “To be sure, religion is no longer central to the official life of most non-religiously affiliated colleges and universities, and on many campuses there is overt hostility among some professors toward attempts at integrating the study of religion into the college curriculum, or toward going too far to accommodate students’ religious views if these conflict with the demands of science or higher learning. “But even at elite schools, there are more professors who are religious than who are nonbelievers, which suggests that in academe — as in American society more generally — secularization has entailed more the privatization of religious belief and its retreat from the public square (notwithstanding the political mobilization of conservative Christians over the past quarter century) than its elimination. “We have noted that professors who are more oriented toward research, who hold doctorates, or who are located in specific disciplinary fields like biology or psychology, tend to be less religious, while those in applied fields like nursing and accounting tend to be more so.” {3} So, while the extremes of Wallace’s prediction are not true, the general trend towards being less religious today than in the past appears accurate. {4} Looking into the details, where the conflict between religion and academia has been the sharpest, for example in the biological sciences, this is due to conflicts over evolution. In psychology the conflict is even more acute. As noted in a high impact article cited in 38 other peer-reviewed journal articles, the subject of religious belief was considered. This article is of special interest to the readers of The Herald, because the lead author is prominent in the broader Bible Student movement. “College faculty most acquainted with “hard” scientific knowledge — physicists, chemists, biologists, and mathematicians — are by every measure substantially more religious than their counterparts in the social sciences and humanities. It is only among anthropologists and non-clinical psychologists that we observe very high rates of disbelief and anti-religious sentiment.” {5}
Science not Hostile to Religion In considering how to approach the scientific and technically literate, it should not be assumed that they are hostile to religion. Likely, they are not. To give a specific example, one of the world’s preeminent geophysicists, Prof. Wallace Broecker of Columbia University, did his undergraduate studies at ultra-conservative Wheaton College in Illinois, home to the famed alumnus Billy Graham. This institution requires students and faculty to sign a statement of belief affirming the literal interpretation of Genesis. However much his Southern Baptist heritage has been jettisoned by Prof. Broecker in his current thinking, he nonetheless confesses that the people there were nice. His specific issues were hell-fire, the 24-hour days of Creation, and Joshua’s long-day. {6} These are three areas where Present Truth also diverges from the enshrined errors of the past! An attitude hostile to the truths of the Scriptures is misguided. Thoughtful views deserve a hearing, and judgment based upon evidence. To reject reasonable views out of hand constitutes an assault on core principles that should be cherished in the scientific community. These minds are well-informed. This is a competitive community in which few but active critical thinkers prevail. Above all, this community is as skeptical to hear from outsiders, as our own Christian community is to listen to someone from outside the movement lecture on religion.
Science Emerged from Christian Culture We acknowledge the debt of modern science to classical culture, and the science of Islam’s “Golden Age.” However, modern empirical science, that is science which tests and examines the validity of its assumptions, emerged from the matrix of Christian culture. Doctrinarians who persecuted true Christianity in the past also persecuted the emergence of science. The Bible as the book of revealed Truth in spiritual things, and the book of nature, have one and the same author. We should seek the hand of a Creator we can trust to harmonize the testimony of the stars in the heavens and the rocks beneath our feet. It is distressing to hear some say that God created the heavenly bodies in a mere seven (literal) days, with only the appearance of being ancient, as a test of faith in the Bible. Surely, presenting an appearance of age, without the fact of age, is something none of us would do to our children when they seek to learn. That approach is inconsistent with the clear principles laid down by Jesus (Matthew 7:7-12). Each of Earth’s first six creative days in Genesis begins with “And God said” (1:3, 6, 9, etc.). But in Genesis 1:1-2, the creation of the heavens and the earth comes before the first creative day. The creative days refer to the preparation of the earth for life, not to the creation of the universe. Thus, a Big Bang even 13.75 billion years ago could not contradict Genesis. (However, a universe without beginning would contradict Genesis.) We stand in an age where details of solar fusion reactions and neutrino production are experimentally compared against theory. How different is our day from the world-view of the 19th century, when the sun was thought to be young because the amount of coal required to give off that energy would soon burn it out! Does this increase of knowledge change our view of the world? It absolutely should. Yet, how easy is the path that maintains a willing ignorance of challenges to dogma while wrapping itself in the respectable mantle of religious conviction! We respect the sincerity and faith of those who embrace Genesis in popular dogma and dismiss any need for corroboration. We also should respect those in science whose lives, bound in the intellectual challenge of discovering scientific truth, experience religion only through its hostility. Properly understood, Christianity holds to a narrow course that understands and reconciles estrangement. __________ (1) Wallace, F.C., Religion: An Anthropological View, Random House, New York (1966) pages 264-265. Clifford Geertz, University of Chicago, in his 1968 review of Wallace’s tome, said of this specific pronouncement, “Possibly. But it will take more than this sort of nervous eclecticism to prove it.” Geertz, Clifford, Book Review, American Anthropologist, Volume 70 (1968) pages 394-396. (2) Nisbet, Matthew C., “Pew Survey of Scientists & the Public: Implications for Public Engagement and Communication,” (July 9, 2009), bigthink.com/ ideas/22713. (3) Gross, Neil, and Solon Simmons, “The Religiosity of American College and University Professors,” Sociology of Religion, 2009, 70:2 101-129; doi:10.1093/socrel/srp026; Advance Access Publication 29 May 2009. (4) Ecklund, Elaine Howard, Jerry Z. Park, Phil Todd Veliz, “Secularization and Religious Change among Elite Scientists,” Social Forces, Volume 86, Number 4 (June 2008) pages 1805-1839.24 25 July / August 2012 (5) Iannaccone, Laurence, Rodney Stark, and Roger Finke, “Rationality and the Religious Mind,” Economic Inquiry, Volume 36, Issue 3 (July 1998) pages 373-389. Bro. Laurie Iannacone was a well-known elder in the Berean Bible Student Movement.
(6) Oral
History Transcript — Dr. Wallace Broecker;
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