Faith Versus Fact : Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible (9780698195516) (19 page)

And what about the most obvious violation of NOMA: the many forms of religion that accept creationism? To save his argument, Gould contended that creationism is neither proper religion nor even an
outgrowth
of religion:

In other words
, our struggle with creationism is political and specific, not religious at all, and not even intellectual in any genuine sense. . . . Creationists do not represent the magisterium of religion. They zealously promote a particular theological doctrine—an intellectually marginal and demographically minority view of religion that they long to impose on the entire world.

Sadly, this argument is nonsense. Anyone who has battled creationism or its city cousin “intelligent design” realizes that these are purely religious phenomena, born of the conflict between evolutionary biology and scripture. Scratch a creationist and at least 99 percent of the time you'll find a religionist.

And it's not just biblical literalists who decry evolution. Many adherents to more moderate faiths, including Catholicism, reject evolution because of its unsavory implications for human morality and uniqueness.
Recall that 42 percent of Americans
are creationists with respect to humans, but biblical fundamentalists are far fewer, and 82 percent of Americans think that some form of creationism should be taught in public schools, either by itself or alongside conventional evolutionary theory. Nor is creationism a “demographically minority view of religion,” at least in America, for, as we've seen, 73 percent of all Americans violate NOMA by seeing at least some acts of God as responsible for living species—hardly a demographic minority.

Finally, Gould's designation of religion as the preserve of morals, meaning, and purpose is both disingenuous and historically inaccurate. For one thing, it ignores a centuries-long debate about the source of ethical belief. Does religion directly create moral views, or does it only codify and reinforce morality that flows from secular springs?

Gould sensed this difficulty but again finessed it by redefinition: all ethics, he claimed, is really religion in disguise. Trying to distinguish the two is, he said, to simply “
quibble about the labels
,” and so he chose to “construe as fundamentally religious (literally, binding us together) all moral discourse on principles that might activate the ideal of universal fellowship of people.” But serious scholarly discussion of ethics really began as a secular endeavor in ancient Greece, continued in a nonreligious vein through philosophers like Kant and Mill, and in our day persists among atheist philosophers like Peter Singer and Anthony Grayling. The majority of modern ethical philosophers are in fact atheists. By eliminating the empirical claims of religion but stretching it to cover ethics and “meaning,” Gould simultaneously shrank and expanded religion.

But what about the other side—the NOMA violations of scientists? Yes, we've had them; biology textbooks of the early twentieth century, for instance, contain chapters on eugenics that repel us today. But these days it's quite rare to find scientists drawing moral lessons from their own work, much less trying to impose them on society. Most scientists have become quite cautious about overstepping their magisterium, and the crimes that Gould imputes to such boundary violations, including lynchings, the
horrors of both world wars, and the bombing of Hiroshima, have little to do with science itself and more with the appropriation of technology by people lacking foresight or morals. (As I'll argue later, this contrasts with religion, whose malfeasance is a direct by-product of the moral codes inherent in most faiths.) And most of science's “violations” were history by the time Gould wrote his book, in contrast to the many empirical claims still made by religion.

By and large, scientists now avoid the “naturalistic fallacy”—the error of drawing moral lessons from observations of nature. They've therefore adopted the NOMA principle far more readily than have philosophers or theologians. Ethical philosophers, particularly the nonbelievers, are rightly peeved to learn that their labors now fall under the rubric of “religion.” But believers are even more upset. Out of the thousands of religious sects on this planet, only a handful lack adherents or dogmas that make empirical claims about the cosmos. A religion whose god does not interact with the world—that is, a religion considered “proper” by Gould's lights—is a religion whose god is absent. Honest believers admit this. One of them is Ian Hutchinson, a Christian physicist:

But the religion
[Gould] is making room for is empty of any claims to historical or scientific fact, doctrinal authority, and supernatural experience. Such a religion, whatever be its attractions to the liberal scientistic mind, could never be Christianity, or for that matter, Judaism or Islam.

The theologian John Haught agrees:

[
A] closer look at Gould's writings
about science and religion will show that he could reconcile them only by understanding religion in a way that most religious people themselves cannot countenance. Contrary to the nearly universal religious sense that religion puts us in touch with the true depths of the real, Gould denied by implication that religion can ever give us anything like reliable knowledge of
what is
. That is the job of science alone. . . . Still, Gould could not espouse the idea that religion in any sense gives us truth.

In the end,
NOMA
is simply an unsatisfying quarrel about labels that, unless you profess a watery deism, cannot reconcile science and religion. As Isaiah realized when prophesying harmony among the beasts, it takes a miracle to reconcile the irreconcilable: “And the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”

Implicit in the NOMA gambit is the claim that science deals only with questions involving natural phenomena, while questions about the supernatural fall in the bailiwick of religion. You'll often see this claim made by scientific organizations trying to avoid alienating believers. Here's such a claim from a very prestigious group of scientists, the National Academies:

Because they are not a part of nature
, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science. In this sense, science and religion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in different ways. Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.

The National Science Teachers Association made a similar proclamation:

Science is a method
of testing natural explanations for natural objects and events. Phenomena that can be observed or measured are amenable to scientific investigation. Science also is based on the observation that the universe operates according to regularities that can be discovered and understood through scientific investigations. Explanations that are not consistent with empirical evidence or that cannot be tested empirically are not a part of science. As a result, explanations of natural phenomena that are not derived from evidence but from myths, personal beliefs, religious values, philosophical axioms, and superstitions are not scientific. Furthermore, because science is limited to explaining natural phenomena through testing based on the use of empirical evidence, it cannot provide religious or ultimate explanations.

Many liberal churches have issued similar statements. By reassuring people that science has nothing to say about their faith, such words are supposed to turn creationists into supporters of evolution. Sadly, there's no evidence that this has worked.

The main problem, however, is that these statements are flatly wrong. Science in fact has a lot to say about the supernatural. It can and has tested it, and so far has found no evidence for it.

But let's back up, for such a statement demands that we clarify what we mean by “supernatural.” One way is to simply claim that the supernatural is “the realm of phenomena that can't be studied by scientific methods.” This is the sense used by the philosopher of science Robert Pennock when arguing that “[
if] we could apply natural knowledge
to understand supernatural powers, then, by definition, they would not be supernatural.” Such a definition makes the statements by the National Academies and the National Science Teachers Association true, but only as tautologies.

As we've already seen, the
Oxford English Dictionary
defines “supernatural” as “belonging to a realm or system that transcends nature, as that of divine, magical, or ghostly beings; attributed to or thought to reveal some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature; occult, paranormal.” In other words, the supernatural includes those phenomena that violate the known laws of nature. What's important to realize is that this definition does not make the supernatural off-limits to science. Indeed, over its history science has repeatedly investigated supernatural claims and, in principle, could find strong evidence for them. But that evidence hasn't appeared.

Note too that the supernatural includes not only divine phenomena (which I'd characterize as things caused by beings having mind but no substance), but also the
paranormal:
phenomena like alchemy, homeopathy, ESP, telekinesis, ghosts, astrology, Buddhist karma, and so on. All of these involve breaking the known laws of nature. Because we surely don't know all the laws of nature, one must consider that something that appears “supernatural” to science may lose that status with further study. As I describe below, there are certain observations that would convince me of the truth of some religions, but that truth might ultimately be due to misunderstanding—a giant magic trick played by space aliens, for instance. After all, in science all
conclusions about the universe are provisional. But it would be a mistake for scientists to completely rule out a priori any truly supernatural phenomena, religious or otherwise.

Nearly all religions make empirical claims about how God interacts with the world, although some of them are hard or impossible to test. Contra
Gould, this means that most religions overstep their NOMA boundaries. I've already mentioned some religious claims about reality, but let's look at how science might test whether phenomena are supernatural acts of a god, as well as the existence of a god itself. The philosophers Yonatan Fishman and Maarten Boudry gave seven such tests, describing which outcomes would give evidence for a god or other supernatural and paranormal phenomena. (There's no real difference between “supernatural” and “paranormal” phenomena: both involve violating the known laws of nature, though the former term usually refers to divine intervention and the latter to “nonreligious” phenomena like ESP and clairvoyance.)

1. Intercessory prayer can heal the sick
or re-grow amputated limbs.

2. Only Catholic intercessory prayers are effective.

3. Anyone who speaks the Prophet Mohammed's name in vain is immediately struck down by lightning, and those who pray to Allah five times a day are free from disease and misfortune.

4. Gross inconsistencies found in the fossil record and independent dating techniques suggest that the earth is less than 10,000 years old—thereby confirming the biblical account and casting doubt upon Darwinian evolution and contemporary scientific accounts of geology and cosmology.

5. Specific information or prophecies claimed to be acquired during near-death experiences or via divine revelation are later confirmed—assuming that conventional means of obtaining this information have been effectively ruled out.

6. Scientific demonstration of extra-sensory perception or other paranormal phenomena (e.g., psychics routinely win the lottery).

7. Mental faculties persist despite destruction of the physical brain, thus supporting the existence of a soul that can survive bodily death.

Now, we already have anecdotal evidence against nearly all of these claims, and more systematic evidence against ESP and the efficacy of prayer. The most relevant studies for our purposes are those of prayer.

It's surprising how often Americans pray
, and how much confidence they have that it works. Eighty-eight percent of Americans pray to God, 76 percent say prayer is an important part of their daily lives, and 83 percent believe that there is a God who answers prayers. And those prayers aren't just meditative exercises. More than 50 percent of Christians, Jews, and Muslims pray for their health and safety, good relationships with others, and help with mental or physical illnesses.

Chapter 5 describes the dreadful outcomes of using prayer instead of medicine for healing, but many Americans use prayer as a
supplement
to doctors.
Over 35 percent of Americans
pray for their health in a given year, and 24 percent ask others to do so. Clearly these people believe that prayers, both their own and others', can work.

If you believe prayer works, and isn't just a way of having a chat with God, then that belief can be tested.
In fact, such a test
was first conducted in 1872 by the geneticist and statistician Francis Galton, Charles Darwin's half cousin. Galton figured that among all British males who lived at least thirty years, those who were prayed for most often would be the regents (“God save the King”). If that were so, you'd expect that kings would, on average, live longer than other males, including the aristocracy, clergy, artists, tradesmen, and doctors themselves. (Kings also have the advantage of better food and medical care.) Contrary to Galton's hypothesis, though, ninety-seven sovereigns examined had the
shortest
longevity of all the classes tested: sixty-four years as opposed to averages between sixty-seven and seventy years. But while Galton fobbed off petitionary prayer as a remnant of ancient superstition, he hedged by suggesting that it still might be useful for communing with any gods, relieving stress, and bringing strength. He apparently believed in belief.

One can, of course, dismiss this study as a lighthearted investigation of a passing idea (Galton was prone to such spur-of-the-moment statistical tests), but
there are more modern and scientifically controlled studies
of the effects of intercessory prayer on healing. Three of the best involved the effect of prayer on recovery after hospitalization for heart problems, after cardiac
catheterization or angioplasty, and the effect of “distant healing” of patients after breast-reconstruction surgery. All three had proper controls: that is, some patients weren't prayed for, and none
knew
whether they were prayed for. The results were uniformly negative: there were no positive effects of prayer on healing. A somewhat smaller study of healing after breast surgery also showed no effect of prayer, and a combination of prayer and other distant-healing methods had no effect on the medical and psychological condition of patients carrying HIV.