We may be a day ahead in New Zealand—and ahead in other ways, truth be told—but today the rest of the world is observing Darwin Day, in celebration of science. Science and religion need not be mutually exclusive but if we’re honest, they almost always are.
There are plenty of religious people who accept the fact of science. Some of them believe in what I call the Cheesemaker Hypothesis (and there must be a proper name for this, but that’s what I call it). This belief structure holds that, like a human making cheese, natural forces take their course according to the laws of nature, but from time to time the cheesemaker intervenes.
When I was a Christian, I often said that there was no reason that the Christian God couldn’t have set the forces of evolution in action. I also said that that it could have been the spark behind the Big Bang. Now, I’m not so sure. If there is any god, then my old beliefs could still be true, but the existence of the universe is for me no proof of the existence of any god.
Whether there is a god or not—and I simply don’t know either way—it’s obvious that species have evolved, and that natural selection is, as Darwin first suggested, the mechanism by which life advances. I simply cannot understand why the Judeo-Christian god couldn’t have chosen to act in that way.
My hostility, as I have often said, is not to religion itself, even if I don’t share it, but rather to the politicisation of religion. Science is a fact, not a belief, and not an ideology—it is constantly questioning itself. Why can’t religion do the same?
2 comments:
I remember watching CBS Sunday Morning some years ago, and listening to an astronomer talk about the fact that he found no inconsistency between his science and his deep religious faith. In fact, he said they enhanced each other. That's just how I feel.
I think it was the same for my parents. My father, an ordained minister, had no trouble with religion and science co-existing, an attitude my mother shared. I think that if anything, science reinforced their religious faith.
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