In ancient times, there was not a distinction between science and religion. People’s inquiry then as now was about cause – what makes things happen as they do, and how can they make things come out better for them. God was a concept that meant cause. Some people’s inquiry led them to posit many causes – the sun, the moon, the wind, the rain, the earth. Where people’s lives were more urban, and power of people over each other became an overwhelming component of life, this became another realm for the inquiry into cause. The gods were the impulses giving power to some, and making others submit.
The Bible chronicles a people’s explorations into the nature of cause. At certain points, they found themselves in possession of a power with which they overwhelmingly won, in conflicts with rivals and when up against challenges in nature and circumstance. They called this power God [cause]. Various prophets gave insight as to the nature of this cause called God, and as time in the Bible progresses, this understanding grows clearer and more accessible to more people. Earlier senses of fearsomeness, vengefulness, and exclusiveness give way to love, support, and universal inclusion. Worship (doing whatever is needed to have the cause work the desired effect) goes from burnt sacrifice, to living mercifully, to embodying a love that embraces all mankind and nature in universal harmony.
The separation of science from religion came, it seems to me, as politics, rather than inquiry, became the basis of what people were led to believe. As long as the study of cause is pure inquiry, science and religion are one. When politics gets wrapped up in religion, manipulation is mixed with inquiry. People are told things are true not because this is someone’s best understanding, but because it will make them do what those in power want. And once people are relying on others to tell them what is true, instead of inquiring on their own, they can be deceived.
I believe the same happens with science. The pure inquiry of science is also susceptible to manipulation by powers that want people to behave in a certain way. We have heard outcries about this regarding the way the current administration has dealt with issues of global warming and other environmental degradation. Less decried, but more pervasive, is what we are told daily by those in support of pharmaceutical giants regarding the nature of health and disease.
In the debates about science and religion over issues such as intelligent design, I keep thinking all the arguments are muddled. Instead of being so concerned with what students will be concluding, I think the focus should be on how they are coming to those conclusions. Are they just being told to believe what’s in the textbook? I know the field of science prides itself in not being susceptible to manipulations. But does the structure of science education protect students from it when it does happen? Does it give students the tools to inquire for themselves?
If students inquire as to the nature of cause and discover God as a palpable force in their lives, what should they do with that? Is it right to make them compartmentalize their inquiry based on subject matter? Is it right to say their attending to the cause that they find governing them (by prayer and worship) is less permitted than for someone else to attend to the cause they find governing them (such as diet and chemicals)?
Well, but is it right for students or parents to shut down a whole area of inquiry because they don’t believe in it? And is it right for students or parents to impose their beliefs on others? What kind of an enlightenment would it take for us to get to the place where none of us felt the need to impose any beliefs about cause on others, but to encourage and trust us all to find out on our own? Then no science education would be repugnant to people of faith, and no faith inquiry would be repugnant to people of science. We would all present our findings as the sharing of our best inquiry to date, knowing that we may or may not be able to express them in a way that resonates with someone else, but trusting (as I do) that all honest inquiry leads to truth.
What if the religion that people are getting is not about inquiry, but is about being told something, with great persuasive manipulation or with threats of damnation? Religion has the sanction that people can believe whatever they want, and a group of people can collectively believe what they want, and they can use whatever means they want to make people agree with them. It is valuable to have this sanction, as there are many ways of knowing that are not universally understood, and there is truth that mainline science doesn’t know how to get to at all. But in this necessary safe haven for religion, there can also bloom various bizarre enslavements. The best protection against this is to have a healthy amount of unmuddled truth readily available to all who seek it. And that is one of the reasons I have chosen to write all this down.
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