Controversation.com

I should say that Pope Benedict’s speech was the first Papal production I have read in its entirety. I just never thought an old guy in a pointy white hat surrounded by religious icons could provide meaty discourse. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I feel as though I‘ve missed out on a tremendous resource – after writing this I’m going to dig up as many of Pope John Paul’s speeches as I can and read through them. If they are half as good as this one, it will be time well spent.

While I could dwell on the too-well-rehearsed Muslim offence at the recent speech by Pope Benedict, I don’t feel the urge to add anything. Much like the great chef Yan, of Yan Can Cook fame, I am a firm believer in the minimalist approach – if the food is exceptionally good, it’s because of what was left out, not what was added. The threats of violence bellowing out of Arab Street in response to the suggestion that the Muslim religion embraces violence is so delicious on its own that there’s nothing I could add to make it tastier.

I would instead like to spend some time on the more interesting claim of the Pope’s speech – that the marriage of religion and reason is right and proper.

Before I move forward, let me step sideways. One of my most favorite kinds of people to have a debate with is an atheist, and I’ll tell you why: Atheists nearly always embrace science as the greatest human achievement, as the pinnacle of the human ability, and often as the only way to save mankind from itself. However, atheism is completely and totally unscientific.

Science is empirical – to make a scientific claim one must have evidence of some sort. To make the claim that God does not exist, one would need knowledge of the entire universe – knowledge matching the vastness of God, otherwise how could such a claim be scientific? And a being with an intellect that matches the vastness of the entire universe is the very definition of God. So atheism proves to be self-defeating, and one cannot be a scientist and an atheist both. Well, not honestly anyway.

The celebration of atheism started with our now widespread worship of science, a worship that has increased exponentially since the Renaissance. Science has given us technology, and technology can seem magical. How many of us know how a remote control works? I mean really know. Could you build one or draw out a complete diagram of all the parts? How about a television? A digital watch? A jet? A cell phone? We are surrounded every day by objects which perform miracles for us, and we have no idea how they do it. Sure – we might have a basic understanding of the physical principles involved, and somewhere there’s a guy that knows absolutely everything there is to know about remote controls, but the vast majority of us use the artifacts around us as if they were magic wands. Sliding our ATM card through the scanner at the grocery store is an act of faith - we have faith that the technology will work correctly and that the proper amount of money will be taken from the proper account. We do not have an explicit knowledge of all the intricacies of an ATM machine and the global financial network, we have faith in the science of the electronics involved. When we take pills prescribed to us by our doctor, we don’t have a complete understanding of the biology and lab work that produced them, we have faith in the science of medicine.

Science has its own jargon, as does any religion. Instead of ‘testament’, ‘faith’, and ‘theological’ we say ‘hypothesis’, ‘proof’, and ‘empirical’. We also have authority figures – professors and scientists instead of ministers and priests. There are dissertations instead of sermons, and periodicals instead of hymn books. Science has taken the place of religion for many people – where once the ignorant masses looked up to the pulpit to find a person who was educated and granted solace through learned lecturing, they now look to a nebulous collection of balding men with white coats and pocket protectors unraveling the secrets of the universe with a microscope and a slide rule.

I am not attempting to reduce or minimize the value of scientific thinking; I am saying that science – just like any religion – is a mode of thinking, no more and no less. A mental tool, powerful in its simplicity and universal standardization, but still only a tool. The great tragedy that has befallen us is the view circulating through the halls of academia and the scientific community that God is somehow unscientific. This assertion has put religion at odds with science, a most unfortunate state of affairs, since religion and science do not share the same subject matter. Science, as I alluded to previously, cannot claim an absence of God without Godly knowledge, and yet there is a framework to existence that obeys knowable laws – physics – that are as immutable and continual as any religion. Science for what is knowable, God for what is not.

And yet I continue to encounter people who feel that no one can honesty believe in God and call themselves a scientist. To be a scientist, a ‘pure scientist’, one must be either an atheist or an agnostic. Strange, because Einstein was a Jew. Sir Isaac Newton was a Christian. Arguably the two greatest scientific minds in the history of the world, both devoutly religious. Both had fervent, unshakeable faith in God. Were they not ‘pure’ scientists?

Others call the church a bastion of ignorance. They point to Galileo and shake their fists at the church for daring to impede on the progress of science and imprisoning a brilliant man in an attempt to keep the population ignorant. Science, they would say, is honest and attempts to educate and better mankind while religion is dogmatic and attempts to stifle. My reply is a simple one – you cannot blame the hammer for the hole in the wall. Science and religion are tools, but ultimately how they are used is up to us, and we are not known for our infallibility. The Nazi eugenics program claimed to be scientific. Dr. Martin Luther King was a religious leader attempting to better mankind. There have been atrocities and miracles on both sides, but ultimately it is nonsensical to place blame or praise on our tools.

Science can only explain the observable universe. Anything beyond the physical boundaries of the universe is, by definition, beyond the scope of science. Science does hold dominion over certain historical aspects the universe, however once science has taken us back as far as it can, we are left with a singularity inside which scientific laws do not apply*. In plain language, the universe had an origin. The origin of the universe cannot be explained by something explicitly within the universe, namely – science. To build any kind of theory on how or why the universe came about requires a tool other than the scientific method. This requirement does not, however, nullify the necessity of the scientific method in explaining the observable universe.

This, I think, was the crux of the Pope’s speech: reason and religion go hand in hand. Science and faith – a rational mind pursues both. Theology is just as valid and essential a field of study as history, literature, or mathematics. Why we are here is just as important as how we got here or what we can do. Philosophy – the root of all sciences – has plenty of room for questions concerning God and men, purpose and structure, morality and physicality. To ignore one side or the other is a crime against our own intellect.

And ignoring things is unscientific.

* There is a tremendously informative treatise on the beginning of time available from Stephen Hawking. In typical Hawking fashion, the daunting and complex world of quantum mechanics, relativity, and imaginary time are described in easily palatable and amusing terms.