Myth, Science and Faith November 16, 2006
Posted by admin in : Discourse, Irrelevant, Political/Editorial, Psycho/Spirit , trackbackThe atheist and the fundamentalist share the belief that science and faith are incompatible.
The atheist claims that the burden of proof of the claim that God exists is on the believers, not the skeptics. The fundamentalist claims authority that a true skeptic can never accept. Both are in error. I do not feel that a believer need prove the existence of God any more than anyone need prove that a certain painting is beautiful. We can all accept the subjective nature of aesthetic judgment. If you find the painting beautiful, science cannot prove you wrong, and should not try. In the same way, atheistic antagonism of spiritual experience is misplaced. Conversely, a fundamentalist who insists that the myth of creation is any sort of fact that should be taught as science is hugely mistaken. This is like claiming that the protagonist of a novel is real in the same way the author is real. Of course this is a fallacy and a gross misreading of the myth.
The compatibility of science and religion is possible when these equally human realms of experience are understood in their proper context. The atheist is likely to be frustrated if she expects human civilization to evolve to a point where religion is unnecessary. As long as we are human, it will never be true that we will lack for myth or folklore or art or dance or ecstasy. They are here to stay, so peace should be made.
I am an atheist with many personal spiritual experiences that felt mystical. I am an atheist with respect for the value of myth, and the truth of myth. Myth is a process of discovery – not an authorized narrative. Issues of authority certainly foul the taste of religion. All the complaints about religion which have to do with authority and power and politics for me are not really challenges to the myth per se, and can be said of any act of authority, including secular authority. The complaints have to do with people fighting wars over religion; or pressure to conform or convert or display religiosity; Asserting their political power in absurd ways like forcing Creationism onto a school curriculum. These are valid charges, but again, all can be directed at secular authority as well, and reveal more about the nature of power than the nature of myth or the experience of faith.
There can be aspects of religious belief which are incompatible with science. Both myth and science evolve. Over time the usefulness of a myth may be superceded by the knowledge provided by science. We can see in the development of child psychology, or in the experience of personal growth in general that we are all limited. In spite of our limitations we need a theory of reality, a paradigm to help us manage the information we receive, and to provide a vocabulary for expressing and interacting with and influencing our reality. The theory might be provisional, and as the limitations of the theory become apparent, we adjust it or overturn it, replacing the old theory with a new one.
One way to apply this thinking to religion is to assert that a myth of creation is really just a provisional theory of the creation of the physical world. The theorists were limited since no science existed to explain fossils, the movements of the stars, DNA, etc. As modern scientific theories of biology and physics and geology emerged, the old myth of creation can be dispensed with as there is no further need to suffer its obvious limitations.
However, creation myths persist. That could be because of lot of people remain ignorant about physics and science. That is certainly the case. But that does not mean there is no further value in the myth, or even that explaining the physics of the world was the original intention of the myth. The book of Genesis was authored to illustrate man’s relationship with God, and every element of that myth always emphasized this. That some people used it provisionally as a theory of physics is their problem – it’s not necessarily inherent in the myth itself. And the practice of religion which involves retelling and reinterpreting the myth remains a viable and dynamic mode of spiritual experience.
Much about the world can be explained by the prevalence of inadequate theories. This is fundamentally an issue of education and literacy. The better educated we are the better leadership we will enjoy, the more research we can conduct, the more we can advance science, and the better able we will be to discern the true value of myth. These schizophrenic antagonisms among the various capacities of the mind will be diminished.
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” There’s nothing more pure/than the kindness of an athiest” so sayeth Catherine Irwin of Freakwater.