Friday, March 06, 2009
And So, The Debate Continues
If we need any more evidence that the secularization of society is a religion unto itself, then I offer this NYTimes op-ed by Dennis Overbye. He confesses to crying at Obama's inaugural address when he said he would “restore science to its rightful place.” I, frankly, was entirely unaware that science had lost its place anywhere, but that is a policy debate I am not here to have at the moment. Says Overbye:
Science is in fact a "monument of received truth," for in studying His creation we learn of the Creator, that dear friends was the very thing that started science inside of Christendom. Creation itself is received truth.
And all those values he claims science teaches, "honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and tolerance," what makes the valuable? Oh, could it be what Lewis called in The Abolition of Man, "The Tao." Science did not make those things valuable, it indeed uses their value, but it did not make them so.
Nope, our friend Mr. Overbye here sets up some caricature of faith and proceeds to debunk science as the only worthy response, when in fact the science he so loves is built on the shoulders of the real religion he fails to see.
But what is sad to this observer is that Overbye's caricature of faith is far from fictitious. Way too many claim genuine faith in Christ but do so in fashions that give credence to his claims. We supply him with the ammunition he needs to make these specious arguments. Sometimes I fear the caricature Christians outnumber the real Christians.
There is a fight between unfettered, amoral science, and people of faith and values. But the fight has to do with the amorality, not science. Further, when we of faith conduct the fight by merely claiming divine authority for morality, we intensify the struggle. Morality, whether ordained by God for the good of society, or as Lewis thought, something separate from God but which He embodied, exists for the good of us individually and corporately. We simply must learn to make our arguments for it apart from simple claims of divine ordination.
We have to quit being the caricatures they tilt up for the sake of their arguments.
We're losing as it is.
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Science is not a monument of received Truth but something that people do to look for truth.Oh the presumptive fallacies present in that little bit of rhetoric.
That endeavor, which has transformed the world in the last few centuries, does indeed teach values. Those values, among others, are honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and tolerance and indeed hunger for opposing points of view. These are the unabashedly pragmatic working principles that guide the buzzing, testing, poking, probing, argumentative, gossiping, gadgety, joking, dreaming and tendentious cloud of activity — the writer and biologist Lewis Thomas once likened it to an anthill — that is slowly and thoroughly penetrating every nook and cranny of the world.
Nobody appeared in a cloud of smoke and taught scientists these virtues. This behavior simply evolved because it worked.
Science is in fact a "monument of received truth," for in studying His creation we learn of the Creator, that dear friends was the very thing that started science inside of Christendom. Creation itself is received truth.
And all those values he claims science teaches, "honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and tolerance," what makes the valuable? Oh, could it be what Lewis called in The Abolition of Man, "The Tao." Science did not make those things valuable, it indeed uses their value, but it did not make them so.
Nope, our friend Mr. Overbye here sets up some caricature of faith and proceeds to debunk science as the only worthy response, when in fact the science he so loves is built on the shoulders of the real religion he fails to see.
But what is sad to this observer is that Overbye's caricature of faith is far from fictitious. Way too many claim genuine faith in Christ but do so in fashions that give credence to his claims. We supply him with the ammunition he needs to make these specious arguments. Sometimes I fear the caricature Christians outnumber the real Christians.
There is a fight between unfettered, amoral science, and people of faith and values. But the fight has to do with the amorality, not science. Further, when we of faith conduct the fight by merely claiming divine authority for morality, we intensify the struggle. Morality, whether ordained by God for the good of society, or as Lewis thought, something separate from God but which He embodied, exists for the good of us individually and corporately. We simply must learn to make our arguments for it apart from simple claims of divine ordination.
We have to quit being the caricatures they tilt up for the sake of their arguments.
We're losing as it is.
Technorati Tags:science, religion. morality
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