Actually, while Catholicism does not take the scientific view as being above its own in describing the world, it has been far more congenial towards science than the Protestant forms of Christianity, especially in the 20th century.
The Catholic Church certainly learned a long, slow lesson from coming down on the wrong side of the Copernican question, and eventually pardoned Galileo (I remember this quip from Mark Russell: "Isn't it typical? You put a criminal in jail and he's back on the street 400 years later.") However, Protestantism covers a broad spectrum, and I'm aware (thanks to having it hammered into me by 1,400,000 pages of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver) that the Reformation was key to the scientific revolution in the Age of Reason. Newton himself was a fire-breathing Puritan. The Reformation idea was that, like the Bible in English, the wonder of God's work should be accessible to all, and scientific investigation, far from being discouraged, was a kind of worship.
I'm not sure I agree, however that not rejecting the evidence of science is the same as embracing it. However universal its themes, the Bible reflects a 2,000-year-old perspective in which much of the Earth was still unknown, let alone space, the microscopic and macroscopic universes, and of course all of modern physics. Hence my interest in seeing what a contemporary, science-based religion would come up with in the way of metaphors. (I agree with you that cosmogonic myths are among the most beautiful of human faith constructs.)
I'm more comfortable with metaphor than with logic; I prefer paradoxy to orthodoxy.
That's beautifully put, and like Carl, I also appreciate the impulse toward a more poetic and descriptive view of the world; our minds are formed for metaphors. To me one of the tragedies of modern science is that it is no longer comprehensible by even a well-educated person. The Newtonian world of simple geometry and immutable laws accords well with our desire for pattern and certainty. I find myself nostalgic for the Bohr particle model I grew up with; I try to understand string theory but find it confusing and incomprehensible!
I think your idea (or Carl's) of religion-as-metaphor, a sort of pantheism that recognizes parallel descriptive stories for the physical universe, is much more viable than Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria." The problem with declaring that science governs this realm, and religion that one, is that science's territory keeps expanding. Within a few decades we will be augmenting our brains; we are already, through the Internet, becoming part of a collective mind in ways that I don't think we realize. Our future selves may not even perceive the same universe that we do, and will no doubt need new stories to make sense of it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: Saturday, September 26th, 2009 06:57 pm (UTC)The Catholic Church certainly learned a long, slow lesson from coming down on the wrong side of the Copernican question, and eventually pardoned Galileo (I remember this quip from Mark Russell: "Isn't it typical? You put a criminal in jail and he's back on the street 400 years later.") However, Protestantism covers a broad spectrum, and I'm aware (thanks to having it hammered into me by 1,400,000 pages of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver) that the Reformation was key to the scientific revolution in the Age of Reason. Newton himself was a fire-breathing Puritan. The Reformation idea was that, like the Bible in English, the wonder of God's work should be accessible to all, and scientific investigation, far from being discouraged, was a kind of worship.
I'm not sure I agree, however that not rejecting the evidence of science is the same as embracing it. However universal its themes, the Bible reflects a 2,000-year-old perspective in which much of the Earth was still unknown, let alone space, the microscopic and macroscopic universes, and of course all of modern physics. Hence my interest in seeing what a contemporary, science-based religion would come up with in the way of metaphors. (I agree with you that cosmogonic myths are among the most beautiful of human faith constructs.)
I'm more comfortable with metaphor than with logic; I prefer paradoxy to orthodoxy.
That's beautifully put, and like Carl, I also appreciate the impulse toward a more poetic and descriptive view of the world; our minds are formed for metaphors. To me one of the tragedies of modern science is that it is no longer comprehensible by even a well-educated person. The Newtonian world of simple geometry and immutable laws accords well with our desire for pattern and certainty. I find myself nostalgic for the Bohr particle model I grew up with; I try to understand string theory but find it confusing and incomprehensible!
I think your idea (or Carl's) of religion-as-metaphor, a sort of pantheism that recognizes parallel descriptive stories for the physical universe, is much more viable than Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria." The problem with declaring that science governs this realm, and religion that one, is that science's territory keeps expanding. Within a few decades we will be augmenting our brains; we are already, through the Internet, becoming part of a collective mind in ways that I don't think we realize. Our future selves may not even perceive the same universe that we do, and will no doubt need new stories to make sense of it.