Gospel of Karin

This essay is a continuation of a series on Ian Barbour’s book When Science Meets Religion. Prior essay:

When Science Meets Religion (Independence). Discusses the second of Barbour’s four categories for examining the differing views on the relationship between science and religion.

Category 3–Dialogue
The Dialogue category focuses on the similarities between the concepts and methods of science and religion. One way in which the two relate is through their presuppositions about nature. Barbour explains that Biblical creation stories provided a conceptual foundation for the rise of Western science.

The concept of a God who created the world by God’s own free will means that the universe is intelligible and contingent—God might have chosen not to create it at all. Since the world is not necessary, its workings cannot be deduced through logic (as the Greeks thought). Instead, we can learn about it only through observation. Judeo-Christian understandings of creation legitimized science for early practitioners, who thought they were inquiring into the mind of God. In addition, because Judeo-Christian tradition holds that nature itself is not divine, experimentation is permissible.

Science and religion are also said to relate by way of questions and answers (as opposed to asking noncontiguous questions as in the Independence category). Science raises questions about order, contingency, and human limits for which religion can provide answers. For example, if the world was created ex nihilo, who created it and why?

Theologian David Tracy calls these “boundary-limit” questions (24). These occur when we push beyond the boundaries of our understanding or when we experience existential crises. In such cases, we probe the mysteries of the universe, our purpose and place within it, and the ethical limits of our actions. Religious texts offer insight into the rational ground of reality and, therefore can help to answer questions that reach past the margins of human experience (24).

Scientist and theologian John Polkinghorne believes that the religious concept of “logos” helps us understand the way in which God communicates God’s rational order to human beings. Polkinghorne argues that we achieve knowledge of God’s rationality through the rational capacities of the human mind, especially through mathematics.

Science and religion share methodological similarities as well. Both employ theories that arise not exclusively from observation, but also through imaginative models. Religion, for example, uses models of God. Quantum physics uses models that represent the subatomic world.

In addition neither religion nor science can claim to be value-free, ahistorical, or objective. Both are informed by cultures, communities, and individual beliefs. Thomas Kuhn for example theorized that scientists form communities that share a set of common metaphysical, conceptual, and methodological assumptions (paradigms). Their commitment to a paradigm is based not on empirical evidence or logical proofs, but on shared values. Scholars such as Holmes Rolston propose that theological beliefs, like scientific theories, are bound to standards of consistency and congruency with experience.

Scientific findings can support theologians in refuting ontological reductionism as well as arguments that chance rules out the existence of God. It also helps them reveal false dualisms rooted in Enlightenment thought.

Neuroscience, for example, provides evidence that body and mind, emotions and reason are inseparable, giving scientific credence to the Biblical view that the ‘heart is the seat of reason’ (135). It also gives material substance to feminist theologians in their affirmation of embodied experience. Quantum indeterminacy challenges the notion that all phenomena are merely the sum of their parts and the materialist claim that science can fully explain reality.

In biology, some scientists suggest holistic understandings of evolutionary development. An example of this is the theory that natural selection involves top-down causation in which an organism’s entire system is involved in DNA selection, but does not interfere with lower level DNA production.

In this context, God may be viewed as setting the boundary conditions for multiple ontological levels that are free to follow their own rules without divine intervention. Related to this, some theologians see God as self-limiting. God gives creatures creative freedom but is involved in the world by suffering along with them. These theologians tend to see God in more personal terms.

Painting: “Women at the Well, Opus 238”, 1892, Paul Signac. Courtesy Mark Harden’s Artchive.