Use of Faith

In the previous post, I attempted to illustrate how science and religion aren’t so different at a very basic, fundamental level. Some of the bedrock tenets of scientific and religious thought, it was argued, requires faith. That faith is quite different in terms of the what specific issues one must “take on faith”, but it is faithfulness in that term’s most basic sense of loyalty or steadfastness.

How scientists and religious believers interpret their faith within and without their respective peer groups can be very different, however.

As a rule, scientists do their work their work alone or in small groups. Using the scientific method (a systematic line of thought characterized by hypothesis, testing, observation, and conclusions comparing the hypothesis to the observed results), the scientist develops their own theories and tests them. When enough observations are recorded, researchers often publish their theories and underlying testing and results for their peers to review, conduct their own confirming experiments, and either confirm or refute the original hypothesis.

Over time, if enough researchers confirm the observation, the theory becomes an accepted part of the scientific thinking of the era. Those theories will continue to be refined and expanded by later generations of scientists as better analytical techniques are developed or new theories challenge the existing paradigm. This is how scientific theories develop and progress.

Translating that into what is then incorporated into the textbooks used to teach future generations of potential scientists, only those theories which the majority of scientists in a given discipline agree with are then codified into the texts used by students. Texts will evolve - new ones are written and existing ones are edited and updated - and stay current with the new paradigms. Controversial theories - while sometimes mentioned in passing in those same textbooks (cold fusion being one contemporary example) - are by-and-large excluded.

The bottom line is the textbooks used by our youngsters growing up in the public school systems around this country are exposed to the best understanding of the sciences available at the time, and agreed to by the vast majority of experts and researchers in that field.

Religious scholars do much the same as scientific researchers in terms of looking at new evidence (for instance, newly-unearthed ancient texts) and evaluating it in terms of the overall picture of religious understanding of the time. They even will write scholarly papers on their finding, which are also evaluated by their peers and used in developing and expanding the religious paradigm.

However, and this is the huge fundamental difference between how scientists and religious believers generally translate their increasing body of knowledge to newcomers, there is not one agreed-to dogma that becomes the accepted religious theory of the time. Different religions - Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, etc. - will look at and incorporate (or perhaps not) new findings. Very few issues facing the modern church are considered universal truths which apply consistently and evenly across all religions.

So herein lies the rub - no major religion can claim to be the one-and-only voice of religion in any country of the world. Many people within a particularly faith can have very strong feelings about their particular, chosen faith, but their is no one “clearinghouse” if you will for one religious belief over all others. The founding fathers who forged this nation, while very religious in many cases themselves, understood this and required the separation of church and state in the Constitution itself.

However, many religions, as part of their religious teachings, require evangelism in order to take their Creator’s message to others in the community and try to convert them to their faith. One particularly loud voice in this regard is the far-Right, evangelical Christian movement. While I have no problem with evangelizing itself, I do have a problem with the undue influence of the evangelical Christian movement in the US.

Which brings me around to an earlier post about Intelligent Design (ID). The proponents of ID are conservative, Republican, evangelicals who see it as their duty to bring “Christian values” to the US populace in order to correct the evils of this country as they perceive them. No matter what generic language they use to try to mask their intent and stay away from separation of church and state arguments, the simple truth is that they are pushing this political agenda and trying to equate it to scientific reasoning.

I think the case has been made pretty effectively made that scientific and religious research have very different approaches, and that those who then use the resulting conclusions have very different ways of communicating those conclusions. Unlike scientific thought, which requires the consensus of the majority of researchers in a given area over a period of many years, religious thought is taught differently depending on any one of the many divergent religious traditions.

The attempt to introduce ID into the public school system in the US is an attempt by the sect of conservative, evangelical Christians (not even all Christian believers in this nation!!) to impose their religious ideology on mainstream US culture. This is clearly a problem on two fronts - this view does not represent all religious believers of all faiths, and it violates the separation clause of the Constitution.

Scientific thought, at least at the level of our public-education (K-12) in this country, is well-established, universally-accepted, and confirmed through repeated scientific challenges and experimentation. Religious thought is not universally accepted nor applied, and is very dependent upon which denomination you may belong to.

Intelligent Design is not scientific thought - it is religious dogma written to look like science. It is not science.

Don’t let ID become a part of your school system’s accepted curriculum. It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

And be sure to keep an eye out for, and make independent conclusions about, a wide variety of other key issues facing this country. This is only one example of many initiatives the fundamentalist, Conservative, evangelicals are foisting upon us.

Stay vigilant. Stay informed. Stay aware.