Science and Religion in Partnership: Steps Toward a Science-Compatible Faith

By Christian Ehemann

Today's religions find themselves in conflict with modern science. If the laws of physics always hold as science claims, how could the miracles have occurred that are reported in sacred texts? How could God intervene in the world today to answer someone's prayer? This book looks for evidence that there is a spiritual reality in addition to a material reality and finds ample evidence that both realities are part of the universe in which we live. It is the rapid development of science over the past three hundred years, and the much slower evolution of religious thought that is the source of today's conflicts.

A satisfactory understanding of our universe requires a partnership between science and religion in which these major areas of thought and knowledge each learn from the other. This understanding must begin with mutual agreement as to what the major components of the universe are. The existence of material reality is not disputed. This book provides a survey of what else exists. For each nonmaterial entity considered, the evidence is examined for consistency with the findings of science. Many inanimate entities are investigated, including mathematical objects, laws of nature, love, and justice. Animate nonmaterial entities investigated include a supreme spiritual being and human souls. A supreme spiritual being need not be a personal god, and reaching that conclusion requires careful analysis of additional data from a variety of sources. Special attention is given to the relationship between Jesus and this personal God.

Following the survey of nonmaterial reality, this book investigates some of the additional implications of science for religious belief and for religious practice. Topics covered here include implications of science as they relate to the effectiveness of prayer, revelation, religious ritual, the focus of religious life, and the afterlife.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889824244

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: The Conflict Between Science and Religion

Chapter 2: Can Two Contrasting Views Be Reconciled?

Chapter 3: Beyond Matter and Energy Part 1

Chapter 4: Beyond Matter and Energy Part 2

Chapter 5: Spiritual Beings

Chapter 6: The Soul

Chapter 7: Seven Questions about God

Chapter 8: Jesus and the Christian God

Chapter 9: Prayer and Religious Experience

Chapter 10: Looking Forward

Summary and Epilogue

Appendix

Some Brief Bios

About the Author

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Science and Religion in Partnership

Steps Toward a Science-Compatible Faith

Christian Ehemann

Copyright © 2023 Christian Ehemann

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2023

ISBN 979-8-88982-423-7 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88982-424-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Preface

I hope this book will be helpful to several different groups of readers. One such group adheres to a religion, but its members have doubts, at least occasionally, because of contradictions between particular religious teachings and the claims of science. A second group is attracted to religion, but its members hesitate to explore religion further because of these contradictions. Members of the third group are religious and are concerned about recent and prospective declines in religious belief and practice in the United States and elsewhere. An important factor in this decline is the increasing importance that the general population assigns to understanding reality based on empirical evidence such as science attempts to provide. A second factor is the failure of religious institutions to respond effectively to that challenge.

For most of my life I have been troubled by conflicts between traditional Christian beliefs and what science says is possible. My mother was Presbyterian. My father was an atheist who trusted in science and who made contributions to the technologies of both the steel and paper industries. I followed my mother and joined the Presbyterian Church. However, I was also interested in science. I couldn't understand how pastors could give sermons about Adam and Eve without acknowledging that the theory of evolution showed that this story could not be literally true. Then there were the many miracles—the sea parting for the escape of the Israelites from Egypt, Jesus walking on water, and most importantly, Jesus coming back to life after being dead for two days. All these events, if they occurred, are contrary to the laws of nature. I am not a theologian nor am I a scientist. However, I developed deep interests in both these areas. With the knowledge I gained in these areas, I eventually found answers to my concerns. This book is a product of that spiritual journey.

A book such as this, about what I now believe and why, is a book about theology. The distinguished theologian Philip Clayton contends that theology is too important to be left to the professionals. Theologians write primarily for each other. Meanwhile, in the churches, traditional ways of expressing Christian beliefs dominate and many find these ways inadequate to respond to the challenges posed by science and the complexities of modern life. The result is a crisis of belief. Other churchgoers, if they examine their beliefs at all, find themselves uncertain about their beliefs and about why they believe them. But, Clayton contends, nonprofessionals can learn to do theology. A firm understanding of one's faith, a theology, is essential if religion is to provide meaningful guidance for one's life.¹

For many years, I made little progress in this regard. In college, I decided on a career in economics. After getting my PhD at Northwestern University, I taught economics at the University of Iowa and the State University of New York, Albany. I then moved to the US Department of Commerce, where I was first part of a team that developed a mathematical-statistical model of the US economy and used it to make forecasts that were circulated within the federal government. Later I used my economic and statistical skills to improve some of the methods used in calculating gross domestic product (GDP).

A turning point in my understanding of religion came in 1993 when I attended an all-day set of lectures presented by Washington's Smithsonian Institution. The speakers were Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, the two leading authorities on the historical Jesus, and Stephen Patterson, the leading authority on the Gospel of Thomas, which had been discovered in Egypt in 1945. That gospel, written before the gospels in the Bible, painted a quite different picture of Jesus. My interest awakened, I followed up by reading a number of books about the historical Jesus and early Christianity. I also discovered the theologian Rudolf Bultmann, who argued that the biblical stories that science and common sense say could not have happened were mythology. He believed that all the mythology of Christianity should be discarded and replaced by explicit statements of whatever religious truths the mythological stories were intended to convey. For a long time, I agreed with Bultmann.

The next turning point did not come until long after my retirement in 2003. I wondered whether the difficulty that Christianity was having in coming to grips with modern science was caused in part by the standardization of Christian belief that occurred in the fourth century. So I started reading some of the earliest Christian philosophers and theologians. I found several that made statements that were very friendly to science, even though in this period knowledge of science was at a low point. I wrote a paper that I circulated to friends, but which remains unpublished, about what I believed were the implications of this discovery for the relationship between science and religion. Next I found contemporary theologians who wrote about this relationship. I learned more from them but did not find any with whom I could agree completely. I was developing my own analysis and conclusions. I realized that understanding the universe in which we live requires not just understanding science and religion separately but also requires a partnership between science and religion in which each is willing to learn from the other. As my thoughts came together, I decided that I needed to tell others what I had found, hence the present book. The earlier paper served as the initial outline for several of the chapters.

Religion, of course, is more than knowledge. It is practice based on this knowledge. An account of the partnership between science and religion needs to include what the implications of this partnership are for one's daily life, for personal religious practice, and for worship. Thus, the topics I discuss include prayer, the Eucharist, and why the discoveries of modern science concerning the history of the universe have a bearing on what should be life's priorities.

I have organized the topics discussed in this book logically rather than the order in which I first investigated them. I hope that the result will be useful to others who have questions about the apparent conflicts between science and religion and about what should be the relationship between them.

April 21, 2023

Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to John F. Haught, professor of theology emeritus at Georgetown University, for encouraging me to write on this subject and for his very helpful subsequent comments on my work. This book would not have happened without his encouragement. Others who have provided useful and often extensive comments are Mary Margaret Wood, professor of education emeritus, University of Georgia; Michael Napoliello, MD, research psychiatrist; Charles E. O'Connor III, attorney, retired, and author (cited in chapter 1); and William Kenney, late professor of English emeritus, Manhattan College. I especially thank my wife Angela for her many helpful comments, steadfast encouragement, and support over the long period during which this book took shape.

Chapter 1

The Conflict Between Science and Religion

There are many different views about the relationship between science and religion. There are partisans of science who believe that religion is nothing but a comforting fantasy. There are partisans of religion who completely reject science because it conflicts with their most deeply held religious beliefs. There are those who believe that there is no conflict between science and religion, failing to recognize the contradictions that exist between their respective claims. There are yet others—those who accept a religion but ignore certain of its teachings because of contradiction with science and those who accept much of science but reject certain of its findings because of conflict with their religious beliefs. Many other individuals affirm the beliefs of a particular religion but are troubled, at least occasionally, by apparent contradictions between science and their faith.

I will argue that none of these positions is fully satisfactory and that there is another option. It begins by recognizing that, at one level, science and religion are concerned with different aspects of the universe in which we live. The province of science is the physical universe, and religion is concerned with what it believes to be an equally real spiritual realm of existence. In practice, religion must also be concerned with how the spiritual realm and the physical realm interact. I will argue that what is needed to reconcile science and religion fully is an understanding of how the physical and spiritual aspects of the universe we inhabit form a unified whole. To achieve this goal, science and religion must be willing to learn from each other. Resolution of this conflict requires a partnership.

Religion asks the question of why the physical universe exists, but it does not set out to answer questions of how it operates. That is, it does not seek to provide new or infallible information about how processes observed in nature work. On matters of how, religion accepts whatever is the generally agreed-upon understanding that prevails at the time the religion is founded. Nevertheless, statements that are made for a spiritual purpose may refer to nature and in doing so can incorporate aspects of the then-prevailing understanding of nature. Difficulties in maintaining consistency between science and religion arise because religions find it very difficult to change when the best understanding of nature changes. The conflict between science and religion is especially strong at the present time because, in the last few centuries, far-reaching developments in science have occurred at an unprecedented rate. Such conflict is not new, however. It has occurred several times in human history and prehistory.

In prehistoric times, early humans saw virtually all events in the physical world as caused by the actions of spirits. The spirits acted whimsically and independently of one another. Hostile spirits were the cause of natural events that resulted in difficulties or harm for humans. The only defense against such events was to find some way to appease the spirits causing the harm. This view was modified as humans became increasingly aware of regularity in the events unfolding in the world of nature. A religion centered on the chaotic actions of spirits was replaced in much of the world by a religion in which the major forces of nature were controlled by gods and goddesses. These gods and goddesses were not all equals. Primary gods—Zeus in Greece, Jove in Rome, Thor in parts of northern Europe, and a trinity consisting of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva in India—exercised some measure of overall control.

As human understanding of nature continued to improve, it became necessary for religion to change again. Nature was more orderly and more helpful to humans than was consistent with a world ruled by gods and goddesses who were not always on the same page. In a classic study of the history of Greek religion, Gilbert Murray traced how the decline of polytheism made Europe ripe for the rapid spread of Christianity in the first centuries of the common era. One factor was the progress of astronomy in documenting the orderliness of nature.¹ Christianity offered Europe a monotheism that placed the control of nature firmly under the control of a single deity who was both benevolent and just.

The Hebrew case, which unfolded in the centuries before the Common Era, was unique in that the route to monotheism took place in stages. In Hebrew tradition, the Hebrew people had always worshiped one god, Yahweh. Only one verse in the Bible suggests an earlier period of polytheism: In the creation story in Genesis, God uses plurals when he says, Let us make humankind in our own image, according to our likeness (Genesis 1:26).² This verse also suggests that the gods had human form as in the mythology of many early religions. In the second chapter of Genesis, there is one God, but he apparently retained human form for he was heard walking in the Garden of Eden at the time of the evening breeze (Genesis 2:8). In time, the Hebrew God lost all trappings of physical form. Nevertheless, when the Hebrews began to worship one God, that god was a tribal one, not a single god for the entire world. The commandment given to them by Moses, You shall have no other gods before me (Exodus 20:3), does not deny the existence of the gods worshipped by other peoples. The Hebrews did not understand Yahweh as the universal god until Second Isaiah, the name given by scholars to the second of the multiple authors of the biblical book of Isaiah, who wrote around 540 BCE during the Babylonian captivity. The Babylonian prophet Zoroaster also described a universal god. Unfortunately, Zoroaster's dates are unknown, so he may have been earlier, or later, or a contemporary of Second Isaiah. Whether there was any contact between them will remain a mystery. In any event, a well-formulated monotheism formed a starting point for Christianity.

In India, religion also accommodated a new understanding of the orderliness of nature, but the response was different than in Europe or Israel. In the earliest Hindu religion, there were many gods, several of which corresponded to Greek and Roman gods. However, in the Vedas, the earliest Hindu scriptures, an additional spiritual entity, Brahman, is identified. Brahman had several different meanings in the Vedas. These include the creator principle and the knowledge required to create. In the Upanishads, the second group of ancient Hindu scriptures, the concept of Brahman is developed further. However, the Hindus never had a core set of beliefs that defined the religion. It was and remains open to alternatives. One early view was that Brahman, as the creator of all things, was the creator of the gods. Another was the Brahman is everywhere and is the soul of the universe. Some ancient texts view Brahman, the soul of the universe, as the same as Atman, the human soul. Given its openness to a wide variety of spiritual interpretations, a philosophically rich religion developed without internal conflict, although competing religions did arise—Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Today most Hindus believe Brahman to be the ultimate reality in the universe, the ultimate source of everything that exists, and of the interdependence of all things.³ Some of today's Hindus regard the individual gods as only symbols of Brahman's many attributes.

While religions changed or evolved, in part, in response to a growing perception of the order, interdependencies, and harmony within nature, they remained essentially unrivaled as the interpreters of this order, interdependencies, and harmony. The source of these aspects of nature was to be found in the spiritual realm. However, an alternative way of understanding the world began to take place in response to the scientific revolution that began in the sixteenth century. What became known as the scientific method was able to prove by demonstration statements about how the physical universe is constructed, what processes are taking place in the physical universe, and how they work. This kind of knowledge was perceived as superior to the kind of knowledge provided by religion which, following the Reformation, appeared to be constantly in dispute among believers with differing opinions. As science developed, the picture of the universe that it described became more and more complete, and the idea gained ground that science would eventually answer all the questions about the universe that can be answered.

Such a change in viewpoint was far from the intent of the earliest contributors to the scientific revolution. They sought merely to understand certain observable aspects of the physical universe. The problem that religion had in accepting their findings was not unlike what had occurred in earlier centuries when a better understanding of the physical universe replaced the one that prevailed when the dominate religion of the time had originated. However, the outcome, at least so far, has been different. Religion in the West has neither collapsed as polytheism did in Europe, nor evolved successfully as did early Hinduism. Rather, religion has lost adherents but is still standing, with its conflicts with science not yet resolved.

To understand the present situation more fully, it is useful to review briefly the history that gave rise to it. The scientific revolution of the sixteenth century was led by Nicolaus Copernicus and others. Copernicus put forward his theory that Earth and the other planets revolved around the sun in his book On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, published in 1543, the last year of his life. Its contention that Earth revolves around the sun contradicts several passages in the Bible. These include, The sun rises, and the sun goes down and hurries to the place where it rises (Ecclesiastes 1:5); The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved (1 Chronicles 16:30); and The sun stopped in mid-heaven and did not hurry to set for about a full day (Joshua 10:13). Copernicus's conclusion was strongly criticized by John Calvin and by Philipp Melanchthon, who had collaborated with Martin Luther. Then in 1546, just three years after the publication of Copernicus's book, the Council of Trent proclaimed that no individual was to challenge the Catholic Church in its role as the sole interpreter of scripture. The passages in the Bible implying that the sun revolves around Earth might have signaled immediate difficulties for Copernicus's book with the Catholic Church, but that opposition to Copernicus was slow to gain steam. His book was not placed on the Index of Forbidden Books until 1616.⁴

A few years later, the publication of a sanitized version was permitted that made clear that the calculations Copernicus advocated could be used for mathematical convenience only and were not to imply that the heliocentric theory was true. Mathematical simplicity was, in fact, the only evidence that Copernicus had offered. The theory could not be confirmed by observation until the telescope was introduced into astronomy by Galileo. In 1632, in spite of warnings, Galileo published his own findings and his justification for them in his book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. For the Catholic Church, the problem appeared to be not so much that the heliocentric theory was wrong but that Galileo was interpreting scripture. A year following his book's publication, Galileo was convicted of heresy and received a harsh sentence that included prison.⁵ Galileo recanted, and his sentence was reduced to house arrest, which continued for the remainder of his life. His last book had to be smuggled out of Italy and published in Holland.

Galileo's work paved the way for the acceptance of the heliocentric theory by science, but the Catholic Church was slow to admit its error. In 1758, the Catholic Church deleted most books advocating the heliocentric theory from its Index of Forbidden Books, but the books by Copernicus and Galileo remained on the Index until 1835. Finally, in October of 1992, Pope John Paul II issued a statement saying that Galileo had been correct all along and that the Catholic Church had erred.⁶

In Northern Europe, religious criticism of the heliocentric theory had little impact. In predominantly Protestant Britain, believers were free to read the Bible for themselves and form their own interpretations. There was no need to take passages that appeared to conflict with the heliocentric theory literally. Isaac Newton and other leading scientists were deeply religious and considered their discoveries furthered evidence of God's intellect and power. Newton, in fact, wrote as much about religion as about science and saw no conflict between them.

This situation began to change with the advent of geology. There had long been speculation about the structure of earth, but the beginning of geology can be dated to 1795 with the publication in Britain of the book Theory of the Earth by James Hutton. This was a comprehensive treatise about the structure of earth that relied on observation. Geology quickly became popular in Britain among both amateurs and professionals. Its findings, however, were at first very puzzling. The Bible formed an important part of the intellectual background of the participants. It provided the only existing record of earth's early history, and in this respect, it had been unchallenged. But the biblical chronology implied that earth had been created less than ten thousand years ago, much more recently than the evidence that was being accumulated. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the debate regarding the age of earth was primarily among scientists, and among them, a consensus for a long history for earth gradually emerged.⁷

A conflict between the science of geology and public opinion came next but quickly merged into the much larger conflict surrounding the theory of evolution following the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1858. Many Christians saw the theory of evolution as an attack on one of their central beliefs. Their response was a defensive one, with much greater emphasis on the literal truth of the Bible than previously. Polarization occurred with both the Protestant churches and the Catholic Church standing in opposition to science.

In the United States, some Protestant denominations gradually accommodated to the theory of evolution while others held firm in their opposition. In 1991, Phillip Johnson, a lawyer, proposed the theory of intelligent design as a way of accepting scientific estimates of the age of earth without accepting the theory of evolution. Intelligent design maintains, without scientific evidence, that the presently existing life-forms are too complex to have occurred by natural selection and that, consequently, major changes in species that occurred over time must have been the result of supernatural intervention. This theory immediately received wide acceptance among evangelical Christians but virtually no acceptance among scientists.⁸

In the Catholic Church, Pope Pius IX included belief in evolution when he promulgated The Syllabus of Errors in 1864. Although the Catholic Church never officially condemned the theory of evolution, it actively discouraged adherence to evolution because of the association it had acquired with materialism. Not until 1950 was evolution recognized, in the encyclical Humani Generis by Pope Pius XII, as a theory that Catholics might explore. Pope John Paul II went a bit further in 1996 when he stated, officially, that the evidence for evolution is strong.⁹ However, the Catholic Church is yet to agree that the theory of evolution is true. The continuing failure of the Catholic Church to acknowledge that evolution occurred is evident in the 2015 encyclical of Pope Francis, Laudato Si', which mentions evolution as a possibility but does not