How much progress has been made in the debate between science and religion during the past few decades, except in incremental rhetorical thermodynamics, and is there any possibility of a credible reconciliation of the two? 

When I was studying at a Jesuit college, way back in the late 1950s, the argument between science and religion was flaring.  In fact, the school invited a philosopher who was described as an atheist and poet to debate the Jesuit professor of philosophy who was considered the most devastating advocate of Catholic doctrine. The atheist had written a rather bleak poem, which he was allowed to read.  Then the supposed fireworks began. Since the audience was prejudiced in favor of the Jesuit, who had a way of smiling in a quite inhospitable manner at every point the atheist attempted to make, I did admire the guest’s commitment and courage, if not his mental resourcefulness. 

Yet these many decades later, where do we find ourselves? While Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and others have waved the banner of reason more furiously, how much more has their work accomplished than the volleys Voltaire, Hume, Paine, and Russell directed at the ancient religions we’ve inherited? 

On the other side, we note the sort of muddled thinking the advocates of science excoriate, along with something a bit promising, at least, among more enlightened divines: a willingness to settle for the defense of pretty thin milk in traditionally religion terms, as in the work of Teilhard de Chardin, whose writing, credit it as credible or not, does have the distinction of being denounced by the Holy See.

I believe part of the apparent insolubility of the debate originates in an incautious overlap of categories by the advocates of the scientific point of view, atheistic at its most confrontational, and in increasingly rickety conjunctions by the defenders of religion. In the first instance, the possibility of a credible spirituality often gets rejected in the penumbra of disdain, and in the second, the wholesale denigration of unbelief results in science being counterproductively aspersed.   

Most conspicuously, the scientific side summons the three or so major religions we’ve inherited from the Iron Age as whipping boys, as if the overlap between them and the religious sentiment is total.  Nor does the scientific side seem especially amenable to any possibility of, to borrow Kant’s term, “a future metaphysics.” 

But I grew up in a time when we were a bit more flexible and acknowledged the difference between traditional religions and the religious sentiment, the latter of which was usually a way to distance oneself from the absurdities of traditional religion while maintaining what one felt was an individual form of spirituality. I don’t think this allowance was a fudge; I think it’s a more accurate reflection of the diversity of the way the human spirit expresses its more cosmic propensities.

On the other hand, the advocates of religion seek to defend it with the apparent bedrock position that there must be a God behind all that exists, the “argument from design,” which many scientists consider inapplicable. Then they blithely go on to increasingly insupportable conjunctions, most notably that Christ is “one of the three persons in God,” that is, essentially equivalent to God, and that Moses and Mohammed were told via privileged conduits what God wants, when we realize, at this time in the development of our knowledge, that we are, one and all, the creatures of finitude.  They also seem unaware that the very idea of God wanting something presupposes, not only knowledge we are highly unlikely to have, but a Supreme Being who is unsatisfied and therefore not complete or, as espoused, perfect.  But, alas, humans are job-assigning creatures. We will even assign jobs to Gods.  But the practical goal is for us to assign ourselves the job of living in consonance with the knowledge that is accessible to us.

The categorical sloppiness characteristic of the debate flies in the face of one of Voltaire’s most incisive dictums: “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.”  Obviously, insubstantial conjunctions also militate against a resolution. Thankfully, there is an inviting route between illogic and analysis paralysis: exact expression. It may not allow us to answer all of our questions but it can optimize our potential to answer those we can.

I would now like to turn to my second question.  If we are to succeed in our quest of a credible reconciliation between science and religion, I believe we must be willing to dare more than we usually do.  When I suggest the way forward that I think has potential, I assume that, as soon as I utter it, the idea will strike my most excitable readers on either side as a repellent oxymoron, but bear with me, and I do not think, in the end, you will be as alarmed as you may suspect.

I suggest that the unrealized potential of the values of secular humanism can provide a modern religious alternative.

Let me begin my intrepid voyage by noting the obvious. Even the most skeptical ought to acknowledge that there is some justification for the human proclivity to seek a connection with the universe, along with whatever may or may not exist apart from our experience of it. After all, we’re compounded of the material of the universe, we evolved as part of it and depend on it moment-to-moment for life support.  The universe can, in fact, be seen, in a general generative sense, as the biological parent of us all. Is it any wonder that we have a widely irrepressible longing to identify with it, even if it seems indifferent to us personally and we suspect we may be indulging in a sympathetic fallacy?

We must reconsider, however, if we are accurate in calling something indifferent that has evolved life on the earth and supports it day after day, eon after eon.  Perhaps, in a general sense, we are the beneficiaries of sufficient care to sustain us. We may also suspect, if the universe is logical – and we can describe its behavior to distant decimals – that we have evolved with sufficient intelligence to be equal to our challenges, which would include the ability to guide our lives within existence as we learn about it.

If so, how can we conduct our lives in distinguished and satisfying ways, including a resolution of the disagreement between science and religion?

The scientific community and the more sensible members of the religious community all purport to have an allegiance to the truth.  We may define truth in different ways, but the avowed allegiance at least offers hope of accommodation.  Specifically, can it provide the foundation for a credible way to satisfy our religious inclination? 

It has much to recommend it.  It does bring us closer to the workings of the universe, and whatever God or Gods may or may not be behind it, rather than placing something we’ve invented between us and it.  I think, in fact, that it constitutes the most fitting foundation that we have ever had for the satisfaction of our religious longings.   

Once we settle on the truth as the foundation of a possible synthesis, or modern religion, we can, I think, reason from it, based on what we can credibly know, to a complete system of beliefs.

One of the most elusive elements of all, we smilingly discover, is the obvious. When most of us try to imagine a new vision, we immediately cast our eyes to the far horizon.  Yet the greatest ideas are generally not way out there.  They are at our feet.  They constitute the ideas that should have always been there but haven’t been.  The goal is to bend our heads down so we can see them.  As Tolstoy said, “Every great idea is simple; it’s like turning on a light.”

As to the topic at hand, let’s take a glancing look at the tradition of Western Philosophy. We “begin in wonder.” We reason toward understanding and analyze such standard topics as justice, truth, love, happiness, ethics, being, etc. But nowhere have we stepped back and said, “Hold it, guys (and gals).  The only reason we can even experience any of these values and think about them is that we are alive.  If we were not, these values would not exist, at least, subjectively, although they might in an objective sense, that is, sort of as Platonic ideals that can be realized by sufficiently cognizant beings anywhere in the universe.  

We thereby come via truth to the proposition that life itself ought to be our foundational value. In such works as Writings on an Ethical Life, Peter Singer expresses deeply felt appreciation for the value of life. But his primary intent is to point out that by the sanctity of life we primarily mean “the sanctity of human life.” He wishes our sympathies to encompass care for every species. In his essays, A. C. Grayling often discusses life-centered values and advocates such commendable goals as fulfillment and flourishing.  He also discusses truths about death: “Two facts – that the dead once lived; and that one mourned them and mourned their loss – are inexpungeably part of the world’s history.  So the presence of those who lived can never be removed from time, which is to say that there is a kind of eternity after all.”  Curiously, however, he has yet to explore the sensibly religious implications of such perceptions.  

The closest we’ve come to a more thoroughgoing expression of the position is to be found in the widely dismissed works of Albert Schweitzer, who, we note, quit the seminary right after he researched and wrote his book, “The Search for the Historical Jesus.”  He decided to become a medical doctor and went on to write, in his book Civilization and Ethics, about “life-negating” and “life-affirming” beliefs. As you undoubtedly know, he finally conceived the much- neglected ethic of “Reverence for Life.” Elaborating, he posited, “What is good for life is good, and what is bad for life is bad.”  Yet, wily human beings, instead of dwelling on the revolutionary implications of his ethic, reduced it to such comfortable commonplaces as “He wouldn’t even swat a fly.” 

Schweitzer realized that his ethic had a spiritual dimension but, despite its naturalistic basis, he sometimes referred to it, unfortunately, I think, as “ethical mysticism.”  Here is a succinct expression of his vision: "True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness, and this may be formulated as follows: ‘I am life which wills to live, and I exist in the midst of life which wills to live.’”

Why the neglect? Perhaps because he tended to assert more than to argue, surprising for a former professor of theology.  Yet he did point to an approach that can be logically developed; for instance, here’s a simple-as-a-dimple syllogism: We revere the things we most highly value; we most highly value life; therefore, we revere life. 

I would now like to turn to four topics that invariably confront the hypothesis that life should be our fundamental value.  How can it lead to an ethical life? How can it satisfy our “infinite” longings?  How can we make peace with what we perceive to be the silence or indifference of the universe?  And how can it help us come to terms with the inevitability of death, or the universality of life spans?

Obviously, I only have space to treat each question briefly.

As to the ethical potential of life as a value, obviously, I am not talking about the usual denigration of it as consisting of “wine, women, and song,” although these delightful elements can, in moderation, and in occasional excess, lead to wonderfully life-enhancing times. I’m talking about life respected for what it is, as a biological wonder that is the basis of all we can experience, and about an intelligently well-proportioned fulfillment of our individual and societal potential.  In this sense, existence entails ethics.

Second, let me address our infinite longings. The Catholic Church has made peace with the pursuit of science by saying that science can study “secondary causes,” such as suns flaring, but not “primary causes,” such as Aristotle’s “unmoved mover.”  In a similar but, I think, more measured way, we can look at the universe as we experience it from a persuasion toward the inevitable pantheism, while remaining open to the possibility of an indescribable existent or existents beyond our experience.  

In pantheistic terms, we note that the universe evolves and sustains life and, with some frequency, annihilates it.  It seems both pragmatically and consequentially more logical to identify with its life-evolving and life-supporting tendencies than with the generally prevalent rubble, insufficiently oxygenated gases, and vagrant heat.  We might, in fact, see the far-flung detritus as a sign of the lengths the universe must go in order to evolve animate life and as a sign of its rarity.  We may also simply ask if we think life is worthy of our vote and, if we are to be worthy of life, we find it must be.

Within the pantheistic viewpoint, we may consider the universe as, perhaps, the grand molecular structure of our natural Supreme Being, or our quite natural God.  When we take this position, we, of course, realize that we are each an embodiment of its life, and we can choose to live in agreement with its lifeward tendencies.  

Since we have no mutually credible evidence to go by and are unlikely to have it in the foreseeable future, how can we go further?  We can remain open to the possibility that there may, as well as may not, be a God or God beyond our experience – without assuming to know any specifics about such a potential existent or existents. From this still-credible viewpoint, we can also say that the tendencies of the universe toward life may also be an expression of the tendencies of such a God or Gods.  So a similar foundation for a modern spirituality obtains: now, instead of aligning our lives only with the tendency toward life of the universe, we also align them with the tendency toward life of a Creator or Creators who may, or may not, be beyond our experience. Life becomes, rather than only an embodiment of the life of our perfectly natural Supreme Being, a representative of such a God or Gods.  As such, we have an additional, but not a necessary, reason to consider life sacred. 

We have developed a position we might call Open Pantheism. And now we arrive at a startling realization. The great question of religion is not, is there a God or isn’t there?  We can define a credible God.  The great question is, do we have life or don’t we?  Then, finding ourselves with it, what should we do? 

As to the apparent silence of the universe, let me simply note that the silence may, in fact, be the charter of whatever freedom to act we have, which is, of course, the only freedom we can logically be responsible for.  It also seems to me a clarion indication that we are to find our way in the knowledge that is available within experience.

Now, let’s turn to death.  It is, in Derrida’s words, “an aporia,” something we can know nothing about.  As Epicurus said, I think more incisively, “Death is nothing to us, because it is the loss of consciousness.”  Bertrand Russell, with his commendable unblinking realism, covered the likely physical possibilities within finitude when he noted, “I believe that when I die I shall rot...” Yet, we might ask, since decomposition would not be an experience for him, would he actually rot? 

The fact is, death is not a subjective event.  It’s an objective one, in terms of the people who observe it. As long as we can experience anything, we’re still alive, or have made a startling transition to another existence. This leads to the interesting supposition that life is the only experience, that is, at least, subjectively, a rather merciful possibility.

Yet, even in sophisticated publications, one still reads fears of death that seem not to have been refined since humanity first noted the universality of the destiny. The unappreciated fact is, everybody alive today owes his life to death, or else the world would have been filled up a long time ago.  Death is also a blessedly reliable way to depose the occasional invincible tyrant.

I do not want to give the impression that I treat death innocently.  During my graduate school days, I was required to dissect a cadaver, a frail and elderly woman, I remember.  Since I got the highest grade in chemistry, I was also invited to be the chemistry professor’s lab assistant. When new cadavers arrived, bandaged head-to-toe in white, one of my duties was to help the dear Ph. D. hang them in the freezer by the occiput.  I was also required to take any number of tests in anatomy and neurology, during which slices of preserved human heads and other body parts were spread along tables with flagged toothpicks placed in structures that I and the other students were to identify. These were truly “Alas, poor Yorick” moments!  I also lived through, at the age of eleven, my sister’s death in a car accident, which essentially destroyed my family, like a diamond that had been hit the wrong way and shattered, and by now the lives of both of my parents have ended.

But what dies?  Let us say when we are born a candle is lit, which represents our life energy.  We all know the commonplace that life and death are more moment-to-moment events; specifically, moments during which we fulfill our potential or we don’t.  I submit that when we do, we live and thereby “save” our life energy, and when we don’t, we die, and thereby lose it.  So, at the end of a fulfilled life, we do not so much die as our lives reach their completion. The candle has expended all of its energy. We might therefore regard fulfillment as a credible form of natural salvation.

Here’s an additional consolation, which harks back to the perspectives on death by A. C. Grayling that I quoted.  Once we have lived, the potential we have realized will have been realized forever and will become part of the eternal tapestry of human fulfillment. Even if I lift a finger and place it back down, the event has happened and nothing can negate that is has happened.  As Russell goes on to say after his biochemical observation, “... and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.”

We might ask, is the concept of a mutual allegiance to the truth – as we can know it within a frankly admitted finitude – as the foundation of an intelligent religion too extravagant a hope?  I remember when art and especially theater were talked about as a new religion. I was privileged to spend ten years in The Playwrights Unit of The Actors Studio.  The belief that theater is a religion was quite alive at the Studio.  

Curiously enough, the institution occupies a former church, a white cement affair with a peaked roof.  The only emblem on the exterior is, however, the blue logo of the The Actors Studio.

In closing, let me propose four logically sound sanctities:

1. The sanctity of the truth, as knowledge that is in agreement with what we can mutually know about existence and thereby closer to its immediate source, the universe, and to whatever ultimate source there may be.

2. The sanctity of life, as the observable expression of the universe and any unknowable source of it toward evolving and sustaining life.

3. The sanctity of the individual, as the way life is brought into existence, its unique embodiment – or, if you will, its chalice. As Chekhov wrote to an editor, “My holy of holies is the human body …”

4. Sanctity through life – that when we guide our lives by reverence for life, we also express reverence through life to the universe and to whatever other source it and its life may have – the most direct, I think, form of worship.

The Catholic Church delights to quote Christ as having said, with regard to St. Peter, “Upon this rock I will build my church.”  How much agony humanity might have been spared if the book of Matthew had said, instead, “Upon this life I will build my church.”

© 2009 Charles Blaise