Many today have concluded that religion is fundamentally irrational, and science is the only model of rationality. However, science and religion are more similar than most people think. They both start off beyond reason and become rational later.
Anselm in the 11th century defined theology as “faith seeking understanding,” thus balancing those who said all we need is faith with those who claimed all we need is science. In the 13th century, Aquinas carried on Anselm’s agenda of putting divine revelation and human knowledge together. At a time when universities were first forming, these doctors of the church defined the criteria for western scholarship from then on. Since then, most mainline churches have had a healthy respect for the role of reason in religion. In fact, in the Anglican church, they believe the three basic pillars of the church to be tradition, scripture, and reason. Blind faith is immature faith.
The great pioneers of science – Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Darwin were religious and hoped their findings would confirm their faith. They believed all truth comes from the one God; therefore, there can be no ultimate contradiction between religion and science.
It is true that people become religious from promptings of the heart. The heart is beyond reason, but has reasons of its own, as Pascal said. God is most readily experienced through faith, prayer, ritual, and acts of compassion. However, whereas religion is more intuitive and right-brained, theology is the rational attempt to understand religion and is more left-brained and logical.
Whether you think science is rational and religion is not depends on your definition of reason. In medieval times, thinkers such as Anselm and Aquinas defined reason as the faculty which knows our place in the universe and that there are divine mysteries beyond human understanding.
However, science eventually predominated to the point where some scientists, such as Richard Dawkins, subscribe to positivism, the belief that only what can be proved by science is rational.
The truth is that science, like religion, starts beyond reason and then becomes rational. Science is based on the faith that the universe is logical. No scientist would begin to do science if they did not have this faith, if they presupposed the universe is beyond understanding. The scientific search for the simplest theory is motivated by the belief that such a theory exists. Charles Townes, a Nobel Prize winner for physics, said: “Science is so successful, we are enthralled. Many people don’t realize that science involves assumptions and faith…nothing is absolutely proved.”
Beyond that, science is increasingly coming face-to-face with mystery. The strange, logic-defying things quantum mechanics tells us happen at the subatomic level of the universe make Christian theology seem more and more reasonable by comparison. If you don’t reject science because it is full of mystery, incomplete knowledge, and paradox, why would you reject religion because it is also full of mystery, incomplete knowledge, and paradox?
When you plunge into the depths of religion, science, and the universe, you must first let go of rationality and be guided by intuition, imagination, wonder, and awe. However, religion, science, and the universe are all secondarily rational. Religion has theology, science has theories, and the universe has material and spiritual laws.
Dawkins believes that science and religion are opposites, with science totally rational and religion totally irrational. However, they are on parallel paths of trying to understand the universe, and at a deep level, the differences are superficial.
Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. brucetallman.com
Intelligent Christian Spirituality 