Why do Christianity and Ignorance go hand in hand for Fundamentalists
I have been thinking about the issue of science vs. Christianity (I hate to phrase it that way, but that is how this topic is often presented), and I believe that it relates to a much bigger issue of Fundamentalist Christians choosing ignorance over knowledge presented to us through science that I believe has been has been good for humanity for the most part. Childhood vaccination, annual exams, screening test such as mammograms and colonoscopies have allowed diseases to be prevented or caught early. People are living longer lives and a better quality of life, although obesity is eroding that idea. We can even save very premature babies, something I believe that even most fundamentalist Christians cannot be against. And I know that most Christians, the majority of Americans,use these services and benefit from them. But once a discussion about science in the context of Christianity is discussed, there is a disdain that people emit toward anyone or anything that may support science and its role in society (interesting enough, I have noticed that conservatives will point out that biology is what makes men and women different). This is a very personal issue for me because I am a veterinarian in grads school doing cancer research, and I been the target of that disdain from time to time when I tell fundamentalists that I am in science.
I have come to the concluion that it has to relate to the Creation Story, which so many fundamentalists insists must be literal. For me, the Creation story tells me some main things: 1. God created the earth-how long, what he made first is irrelevant. But He created everything, the earth and humanity-including me and many other scientists who have developed cures and treatments for many diseases and who will continue to discover new treatments and cures. 2. People sin. Whether the devil came in the form of a serpent, whether it was an apple from a tree they were not supposed to eat, again irrelevant. We have free will and most of the time we make the right choice but we sometimes make the wrong choice, sometimes a lot of bad choices. The creation story is trying to present bigger truths, but so many people are wasting time being caught up in the details. I think the root of this is that the tree is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Good being God and Evil being everything else is you want to take it to the extreme.
Science is not trying to trump faith. God had given some people a gift for research and/or medicine, and many people go into science to help people. How could God abhor such an ideal? And the more we discover, personally I am so shocked that I have to believe that a Higher Being was involved in the creation of this planet. The human body is so complex, but most of the time things go right and we are healthy. It should be surprising that the majority of us don't have some serious health issue. How can God not exist when you think about this?
And the Bible does not provide us with scientific information. The medical knowledge at the times the books of the Bible were written was very sparse. If I were a heart surgeon, I would have to go through med school, internship, and surgical residency. I would have to know the heart inside out. That means I would have to read textbooks on the heart and surgical techniques done on the heart. With that foundation, I may even be able to develop a new technique or improve on an old one or develop a device so those with heart disease can live longer and better. The Bible is not going to give me that knowledge. It will teach me how to treat my patients with dignity and how to interact with colleagues at the hospital, but it will not give me the fundamentals on how to perform heart surgery. And that is not the Bible's intention. The Bible is for our souls, and attached to our souls are minds with the potential to improve people's lives through literature, art, music, and yes, even science.
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In Catholic School...
...back in the mid-60s we were taught that the story of Adam and Eve was metaphor. We were also taught that believing in evolution was fine as long as you accept the premise that at a certain point God gave mankind a soul.
Galileo and the Church; history repeats
First I want to say welcome to klhayes and thanks for a great topic. Hope you stick around.
There is a great book called "Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo". The book includes letters exchanged between Galileo and his contemporaries who were struggling to square their beliefs and understanding about the universe and God with things that Galileo was reporting. I'm sure we all know the general trajectory of his story, but when I read the book, I was amazed at how similar the worries and arguments the Church proffered in that time were to those of today that relate to evolution.
I would say that part of the problem lies in the lack of understanding of the philosophy of science. People are not taught to see the limitations of science at the same time as they are taught its value. Science has nothing to say about the existence of God. Science cannot measure God, cannot observe God, and therefore does not threaten our faith in him. Just understanding that can help alleviate some of the fear that fuels the aversion fundamentalists have.
I think that a second problem is that many science teachers don't know how to make the case for evolution and also don't know how to respond to some of the creationist objections in a way that is not dismissive.
Finally, there is a serious problem that belongs exclusively to fundamentalists in this situation, though I'm sure we're all guilty of it at some point in our lives. That problem is anchoring to our beliefs because they are the beliefs that we've always had and always been taught. This problem is one that has to be handled delicately and respectfully if progress is going to be made. Patience and understanding of fundamentalists' core values and beliefs is necessary. Think about a time one of your own most cherished assumptions was shaken. It can be unsettling and even scary and at times we have negative and irrational responses. If we can lead people allow rational paths that allow them to still maintain the foundational beliefs that they hold. For example, the Bible is infallible and supremely true (great concept Bill) if not literally true as they had once believed.
David
Fundamentalists and Science
Thanks for this post Kristie, come by Crossleft more often . Yes it is too bad that for many it has came down to 'science vs religion". For it is not "art vs religion" or "religion vs music". Hopefully one day we can see it all as interelating and complimentary.
The hostility of the fundamentalists is frightening. It is as if we are flirting with another dark age of "ooga booga" religion.Lets hope that they don't start burning female herbalists (witches) at the stake soon.
Lets hope that soon we will have enough people to tilt opinion in the right direction and to a more wholesome, healthy, attitude towards the interaction of science and religion.
Personally I think God not only created well,but also appointed us as stewards of the earth,so that the possibilities are unlimited.
The Intolerants?
Since ALL schools were once in Churches, it is clear that the framers and populace of New America did not hold to this idea of seperation of Church and State that has been utterly hostile to Christians and Christianity since certain people have made the issue.
I do hold to the view that America is not necessarily a "Christian nation," but only because what Americans did to indigenous peoples and to African slaves is not Christian at all, but holds tightly to evolutionary Darwinism in practice and reality. The strong did what the strong always do. It's interesting to see that native peoples and the descendants of African slaves have done no better with their power. The powerful inflict pain and suffering on the weak even still.
Science is no monster to Christian reality. It is within science that Christian morality finds its greatest champion. Doing away with human emotionalism that clouds the senses is a plus in determining the truth of scripture. Allowing for chaos to reign is neither Christian, nor is it logical. Science can only prove God's word, it can head in no other direction as something from nothing is the definition of insanity and certainly not a logical thought process. Science is the created looking back at and to the Creator. Like a child figuring out how mom and dad got things done, science leads us to what has always been present. No person "invents" anything, they simply "dis-cover" properties that were always there.
Science has proven that there are actual fundamental physical truths. Throw a rock away from the ground while standing on planet earth and it will always fall back towards the ground. Therefore, the word "fundamentalist" takes on a mantle of confidence that brings the word "progressive" into the definition of intelligence and reason and removes the mental stress of knee-jerk emotionalism from ruling the thought process. A "Christian fundamentalist" is no different than a scientist that has learned their lesson of being wrong and then choosing what is right. No scientist - for example - would throw a brick straight up over their head and stay in that place, unless they wanted to learn the consequences of bad choices.
The Gospel shows the experiments necessary to determine right from wrong, no differently than a scientist that knows better then to pick up a burning coal without protective gloves on, because the scars of previous failures shows the way from ignorance to intelligence. Christians that have chosen right from wrong have embraced progressive thought with progressive action. For example: Jesus taught the ignorant and the rebellious that marriage is a man and a woman committed to each other for a lifetime. The Apostles took the fundamental "isms" in the lessons of Jesus and applied a progressive thought process to the truth of God. Mathematics, quantum physics, anatomy, physiology, biology and the physical sciences etc., etc., etc., all find complete agreement and approval in the word of God. Especially the Gospel and the letters written by the Apostles. Being a fundamentalist, like a scientist that knows the laws of nature, is not always a misnomer or a bad label.
I have yet to see ANY " Christian fundamentalists" shouting down anyone at colleges and universities, except those that espouse progressive social and political identity as being hyper angry and intolerant of others and not allowing these "others" to speak freely. Even, when invited onto campuses. It is not a progressive value to disallow free speech and a free exchange of ideas. No matter how different they may be from a minority or a majority of the populace. Let all be heard and let all be judged accordingly. A free exchange of ideas should mean just that. The Minutemen, for example, were not shouted down by fundamentalist Christians, but by zealous "secular" progressives. Let us be very careful how we define and use the word "fundamentlist." It is definately a two-edged sword of a word.
philosophy of science
Donny! I don't care what others think, I like having you around if for no other reason than that you bring a different perspective to the table. However, I would say that if you have said the things that Stephen has attributed to you here http://www.instituteforprogressivechristianity.org/crossleft/?q=demvote#...
then it seems that you may be guilty of some misrepresentation of your positions. I don't see how you can say this "...Progressives... work without fasting to criminalize Christian speech and beliefs and re-write whatever disapproves of their choices and lifestyles." and still claim to be a progressive as you do on this post http://www.instituteforprogressivechristianity.org/crossleft/?q=node/542...
To respond to your post here, I have to say that your comments betray common misperceptions about the nature of science and its proper domain. While I thoroughly agree with your assertion that science is not threat to Christianity, science does NOT PROVE anything. Descartes and Locke thought that it could, but writers like Hume and Kant have powerfully refuted those assertions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hume's_fork
Science is an endeavor to identify regularities in nature and attribute to those regularities some rule by which we can make predictions of future events. It is predicated on the assumption that past events will be representative of future events. This assumption (science relies on many assumptions and this is only one) cannot be proven. Our reliance on that assumption is instinctive and we wouldn't be able to do much of anything if we did not adopt it, but it is fundamentally circular. Your example of a falling object demonstrates what I'm talking about. You have observed that unsupported objects fall in the past. You assume that unsupported objects will also fall in the future. What guarantee do you have? You might point to other experiences in which past events were repeated, but you would be validating experience by appealing to experience. We all believe this assumption to be true, but there is no guarantee that it is.
Scientific theories have been and will likely continue to be problematic in many instances. Kuhn's book on scientific revolutions explicates at length how often the going scientific theory is problematic in a number of ways. When we think that we have one set of problems solved, an irregularity inevitably pops up and, when the scientific community examines it closely, what was thought to be a mere anomaly turns into a huge inconsistency. Eventually these lead to new explanatory models that work better for the things we're concerned about at the time, but those give way to new problems etc. I do believe that scientific inquiry is valuable. Don't get me wrong there. However, I don't think that it leads us to knowledge or truth. A good scientific theory can tell us what seems likely to occur provided that all of our assumptions are correct. That's not much, but it is something. Problems in science are ok. In order for theories to be truly scientific, according to Popper, they need to be falsifiable. I don't believe that the Bible is falsifiable and if not, it isn't scientific. If you disagree, all you have to do is to give an example of how you think the Bible might be theoretically falsified.
Another issue that I have with what you've said is that somehow science yields morality. Morals are behavioral norms. They tell us what we 'ought to do'. Science can only tell us what is. This was also pointed out by David Hume. He referred to it as the 'is/ought' distinction, I believe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem
The 'ought' is always derived from some internal human value that cannot be observed or measured (thus outside of the domain of science). Kant responded to this observation with his distinction between hypothetical imperatives and categorical imperatives.
I would also disagree with your statement "The Gospel shows the experiments necessary to determine right from wrong". The gospels have nothing to do with experiments. The gospels are God's good news to man. I agree that we can see consequences for evil and blessings when we do good, but I don't see anywhere in scripture that advocates testing those claims. Nor do I believe that you could take those observations and measure the degree of pain and suffering that resulted from sin X and formulize a naturalistic rule to predict future pain or quantity of blessing for acts that fall into alignment with God's will. I also find your claims somewhat ironic in that much of the gospel literature deals with miracles which by definition are supernatural and violate the very regularities in nature that the sciences strive to describe and formulate. Do you see the irony there?
Finally, I don't think that the scientific disciplines that you have listed are contradictory to the Bible, but I wouldn't go so far as to say "all find complete agreement and approval in the word of God." Can you substantiate your claim here?
David
re: "ooga booga"
A good thing to remember is, to quote an old friend and priest who was, I think, quoting or paraphrasing Bultmann, "something doesn't have to be literally true to be supremely true."
The creation story is a story about choice, responsibility, stewardship, regardless of whatever theological conclusions one brings to it or draws from it. Even for secularists, it's an applicable parable for the way things are.
The possibilities are as unlimited as anything can be in a finite world, both for the good and for the evil. A message from progressive Christians to fundamentalists is that, regardless of one's eschatology, we're here to choose the good: to "choose life", to exercise responsible stewardship and live according to the Beatitudes.