Science And the Church

It’s really rather frightening to me that in the beginning of a new millennium two thousand years after the birth of Christianity, a time where we are considering probes to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, fifty percent of our population-- a population that enjoys the benefits of scientific development and snow-balling technology in virtually every sphere of life– is willing to toss away all of our progress and intellectual achievement for what is for some a comfortable, pre-ordained world of mysticism and spirituality.
.
This retreat from a state of mind that embraces scientific inquiry is the contemporary equivalent of what precipated Milton’s authorship of the Aereopagitica, the book burnings that were authorized by a church afraid of free thought. It is more than just a temporary setback; it is a rebuke to our way of life. It is almost as if half of us decided to turn our back on what is known and what is provable for the sake of the unknown and what is unprovable..

Trying to wrap one’s mind around this conundrum provides no easy answers. Is it that we can’t deal with the uncertainties of life? Is reality too complex? Superstition and myth a comfortable haven for those who can’t cope? Or is just that everyone has been reborn and in the process accepted a literal interpretation of the bible that is at odds with reality and the facts?

it is almost as if the mental rigors and the probing into the unknown are almost too discomforting to bear and that mankind needs to reframe the world into a much simpler place where all that is known is known and preordained. It is man’s own ability to control that which he cannot really control. Applying the mind-sets of TV to the great unknown! That would mean projecting our own unknowns and uncertainties into a world that for the unscientific may not only be hard to understand but discomforting as well.

In effect, we are being asked to reject two thousand years of progress for the sake of literal interpretation of the bible that, itself, is the product of man’s decision and made literally hundreds of years after the death of it’s leading protagonist…

It is one thing to believe in spirituality ; it is quite another to reject what we know is true and replace it with a comfortable kind of spirituality that obviates everything that doesn’t agree with what we choose to believe, thereby reaffirming our own sense of “rightness.”.

It becomes a very dangerous faux world that tends to split the adherents apart from those who find arguments against such a view of the world. It is one thing to personally believe in a personal faith; it is quite another to impose that view on the world with all of the collateral consequences such rigid absolutism confers…

For fifty percent of the population to block out what is known and proven is frightening beyond belief because it indicates that superstition supersedes all reason. But that is not all of it: Incredulously, almost fifty percent of the population is ready for the Raptures; ready to see those who don’t believe as they do be destroyed by an emerging Armageddon as the “true believers” rush to Heaven.

In an even more bizarre expression of where such absolute beliefs can lead we need to look further than the newest Christian computer games that demand that people comply with the leader’s spiritual values or be eliminated symbolically, not by stoning but metaphorically by the most advanced weaponry in our arsenal which gives the lie to the notion of Christian charity to one’s fellow man—certainly, not what Jesus would have us subscribe to by any stretch of the imagination. More to the point, would Jesus even recognizes what passes as Christianity as it is viewed by those who believe that all of those who don’t follow their own views will be swallowed up in the abyss. Hardly!

Some might say, hey, this has little to do with what actually happened. It negates what we do know: That the gospels were written by man—actually many men; and even the four original gospels were written decades after the death of Jesus and not even necessarily by Mark, Luke, Matthew or John. . Moreover, the subsequent Gnostic gospels were written hundreds of years subsequent to the death of Jesus by different people and it took the church fathes to decide which of the gospels reflected the church’s view and should be included in the liturgy. So what makes this cast in concrete to be taken literally?


This kind of thinking suggests that science as we once knew it as a font for truth and objectivity has been supplanted and that what was known two thousand years ago still holds true today. As in the Medieval world, if we accept this view, things that don’t comply with this preordained view are rejected. More critically, however, if this view is exported to other areas of decision making it would explain why we entered Iraq as we did accepting what we wanted to believe and rejecting what didn’t fit. This, of course, sets us up for the big fall when it is discovered that metaphysics cannot be used to explain the laws of physics or deny known truths. In an ancillary way, our newly discovered spirituality has taken its toll upon our scientific leadership, leaving our economy vulnerable to a surge in spirituality that seems to ignore the things that made us a leader in the free world and enabled us to impose our will on others.. The fact remains that consequences always have consequences.

If one were to look back for an instructive lesson, we’d need go no further than the ancient Greeks. In their history, you might find the antecedents of what could happen now among the evolution of the Pythagoreans who tossed aside the commitment to scientific inquiry and proof in order to proceed in ways tempered by mysticism and symbolism. In other words, reasoned inquiry that had spearheaded Greek thought and set an example for the world was sacrificed for the sake of the mystical interpretation of numbers and their influence on life. Of course, none of it had any bearing on the real world and within a very short time frame, Greece’s preeminence in things scientific and rational evanesced like a wisp of smoke, leaving Greece a pathetic backwater as opposed to an awakening Rome that believed in War and slavery.. The question de jour is whether we, ourselves, are approaching such a tipping point.

What does the past hold for the future?

It tells us that if we are willing to put aside what we know in terms of scientific inquiry and analysis for the sake of spiritual “truths,” we may find ourselves rushing headlong into an unreasoned abyss.

And whereas this may have been at one time fun to speculate about, the truth remains that if fifty percent of the population wants the schoolbooks rewritten to reflect spirituality over science, it will happen. If fifty percent of our population believes that Noah really had every animal proceed two by two onto his Arc; and that there really was a Garden of Eden with a serpent and the voice of God, there is a good chance that serious scientific inquiry may be sacrificed and that we, too, will lose our forward trajectory which is predicated on science, human inquiry and rationality.

This may be the inherent flaw in democracy where the majority decides the future instead of those qualified in terms of intellect and capacity. If the Evangelical view precludes what we already know and understand through empirical evidence and the spirit of scientific inquiry, we shall see life imitate scripture and even more, scriptural interpretation that even supersedes what is part of the new testament. What is particularly interesting, is that the fundamental view
goes beyond what the bible to suggest with force and a sense of certainty that there will be a great war between the forces of Islam and Christianity where everyone who has not sworn allegiance to the forces of Christianity will be consumed by the fires of Hell!

This view seems to be subtext in the belief system that underlies those who have gone through the process of being “reborn,” and it is frightening to think that at a time where we stand at the cusp of remarkable new knowledge, we are willing to reject all of that for the sake of something of faith that may decide all outcomes for our society and the future of the world.

Les Aaron