Rocks of Ages (20 page)

Much as modern syncretism riles me, I can at least take comfort in a wry feature of the contemporary version—at least from the parochial perspective of a
professional scientist. Older and classical forms of syncretism always gave the nod to God—that is, religion set the outlines that everyone had to accept, and science then had to conform. Irenics in this older mode required that the principles and findings of science yield religious results known in advance to be true. Indeed, such conformity represented the primary test of science’s power and validity. For example, Thomas Burnet (see
this page
–
this page
) did not doubt that the biblical narrative recorded the earth’s actual history; his scientific job, by his lights, required validation of this known history in terms of causation by invariant natural laws rather than miracles.

But the spectacular growth and success of science has turned the tables for modern versions of syncretism. Now the conclusions of science must be accepted a priori, and religious interpretations must be finessed and adjusted to match unimpeachable results from the magisterium of natural knowledge! The Big Bang happened, and we must now find God at this tumultuous origin.

I’m sorry. I know that I shouldn’t be so dismissive, especially (and ironically) in a section about irenicism. But I find the arguments of syncretism so flawed, so illogical, so based in hope alone, and so freighted by past procedures and certainties, that I have difficulty keeping a straight face or a peaceful pen.

I also feel particularly sensitive about this issue because, as I wrote this book in the summer of 1998, a deluge of media hype enveloped the syncretist position, as though some startlingly new and persuasive argument had been formulated, or some equally exciting and transforming discovery had been made. In fact, absolutely nothing of intellectual novelty had been added, as the same bad arguments surfaced into a glare of publicity because the J. M. Templeton Foundation, established by its fabulously wealthy eponym to advance the syncretist program under the guise of more general and catholic (small c) discussion about science and religion, garnered a splash of media attention by spending 1.4 million bucks to hold a conference in Berkeley on “science and the spiritual quest.”

In a genuine example of true creation
ex nihilo—
that is, the invention of an issue by fiat of media reports, rather than by force of argument or content of material—at least three major sources preached the syncretist gospel in their headlines and vapidly uncritical reports: “Faith and Reason, Together Again”
(The Wall Street Journal
, June 12); “Science and Religion: Bridging the Great Divide”
(The New York Times
, June 30); and a cover story in
Newsweek
(July 20) simply titled “Science Finds God.” Scientists could only be mystified by this last claim, but at least we can now be certain about one of God’s attributes: he sells newspapers and magazines.

The
Times
article admitted the intellectual torpor of the proceedings: “A kind of Sunday school politeness pervaded the meeting, with none of the impassioned confrontations expected from such an emotionally charged subject … The audience politely applauded after each presentation. But there was little sense of intellectual excitement.” But from whence could such excitement arise in principle? If NOMA holds (and I devote this book to advocating the validity of this proposition), then facts and explanations developed under the magisterium of science cannot validate (or deny) the precepts of religion. Indeed, if we look at the so-called arguments for syncretism, as described in these reports, they all devolve into a series of fuzzy statements awash in metaphor and illogic. Consider just three examples, not chosen as egregiously silly, but representative of the standard fare.

1. Woolly metaphor misportrayed as decisive content.
Newsweek
reports the following fusion of Christ and quanta:

Now what am I to make of such a claim? That the status of Jesus as both God and man (a central trinitarian concept) must be factually true because electrons, and other basic components, can be construed as either waves or particles? I don’t see what such a comparison could indicate except that the human mind can embrace contradiction (an interesting point, to be sure, but not a statement about the factual character of God), and that people can construct the wildest metaphors.

2. Clutching at straws based on superficial similarity.
The Wall Street Journal
presents the following two remarkable examples of the syncretist notion that science can validate spiritual claims. We learn, first of all, that Darwin himself was a closet syncretist:

Again, what am I supposed to conclude from such fuzziness? Has the factuality of an old-fashioned creating God been proven because Darwin used developmental language to describe the genealogical history of life? I thought that the God of many Christians confined this kind of creative activity to the early days of life’s history. Or is Mr. Peacocke’s God just retooling himself in the spiffy language of modern science?

We next learn that Genesis finds confirmation in the latest developments of cosmology:

Now what, pray tell, is “neatly enough”? Some folks insist that Genesis occurred less than ten thousand years ago. Moreover, the Big Bang cannot be touted as a description of God’s initial creation of the universe
ex nihilo
. The Big Bang does not set the ultimate beginning of all material things—a subject outside the
magisterium of science. The Big Bang is a proposition about the origin of our
known
universe. This scientific theory cannot, in principle, specify what, if anything, happened before (if such a notion even has any meaning)—because any previous history gets erased when and if the stuff of the universe collapses to such an effective point of origin.

3. Plain, old-fashioned illogic. The
pièce de résistance
of modern syncretism, at least in almost all public accounting I have ever read, lies in the so-called anthropic principle—a notion with as many definitions as supporters, and which, in my view, is either utterly trivial in its “weak versions” (the designation of supporters, not my deprecation), or completely illogical in “strong versions.”
The Wall Street Journal
explains the anthropic principle as “the biggest hint” of God’s presence in the findings of science:

Yes, but so what? The weak version only tells us that life fits well with nature’s laws, and couldn’t exist if the laws were even the tiniest bit different. Interesting, but I see no religious implications—and, in fairness, neither do most syncretists (thus their own designation as “weak”). The “strong” version provides my favorite example of illogic in high places. Since human life couldn’t exist if the laws of nature were even a tad different, then the laws must be as they are because a creating God desired our presence.

This argument reduces to pure nonsense based on the unstated premise—which then destroys the “strong anthropic principle” by turning it into a classic example of circular reasoning—that humans arose for good and necessary reasons (and that whatever allowed us to get here must therefore exist to fulfill our destiny). Without this premise (which I regard as silly, arrogant, and utterly unsupported), the strong anthropic principle collapses upon the equal plausibility of this opposite interpretation: “If the laws of nature were just a tad different, we wouldn’t be here. Right. Some other configuration of matter and energy would then exist, and the universe would present just as interesting a construction, with all parts conforming to reigning laws of this different nature. Except that we wouldn’t be around to make silly arguments about this alternate universe. So we wouldn’t be here. So what.” (I’m glad we are here,
by the way—but I don’t see how any argument for God’s existence can emerge from my pleasure.)

Readers may have laughed at the old and absurd arguments I cited for the divine benevolence of ichneumons feeding upon live and paralyzed caterpillars (see
this page
). You may have wondered why I chose to devote so much space to such a straw-man violation of NOMA from a bad old past, now superseded. But will future generations view these current syncretist arguments against NOMA, and for the inference of God from facts of nature, as any wiser?

The second irenicist alternative to NOMA—too cold, too hard, and too little—requires only a paragraph or two of commentary because no intellectual argument, but only current (and lamentable) social custom, fuels the strategy. The syncretists may be silly, but at least they talk and try. The opposite irenicism of “no offense, please, we’re politically correct” adopts the fully avoidant tactic of never generating conflict by never talking to each other, or speaking in such muted and meaningless euphemisms that no content or definition can ever emerge. Sure, we can avoid the language of racial conflict if we vow never to talk about race. But what then can change, and what can ever be resolved?

And, yes, we could bring science and religion into some form of coexistence under political correctness if all scientists promised never to say anything about religion,
and all religious professionals swore that the troublesome S-word would never pass their lips. Contemporary American culture has actually adopted this unholy contract for many issues that should be generating healthy debate, and surely cannot ever be brought to a fair conclusion if we don’t talk to each other. Intellectuals can only regard such voluntary suppression of discussion as a guarantee that tough but resolvable issues will continue to fester and haunt us, and as a sin—I don’t know how else to say this—against the human mind and heart. If we have so little confidence in our unique mental abilities, and in our intrinsic goodwill, then what indeed is man (and woman) that anyone should be mindful of us?

NOMA does cherish the separate status of science and religion—regarding each as a distinctive institution, a rock for all our ages, offering vital contributions to human understanding. But NOMA rejects the two paths to irenicism on either side of its own tough-minded and insistent search for fruitful dialogue—the false and illogical union of syncretism, and the perverse proposal of “political correctness” that peace may best be secured by the “three monkeys” solution of covering eyes, ears, and mouth.

The non-overlapping magisteria of science and religion must greet each other with respect and interest on the most distinctively human field of talk. To close with
a rationale from each magisterium, scientists generally argue that language represents the most special and transforming feature of human distinctiveness—and only a dolt would fail to lead with his best weapon. As for religion, this book began with the story of Doubting Thomas from the end of John’s gospel. So let me take a page from
Finnegans Wake
, and become recursive by ending this book with the beginning of the same document. I do know, of course, that the phrase bears another meaning in its original context, but John also acknowledged the same precious uniqueness—the key to resolving our conflicts, and the positive force behind NOMA—in starting his gospel with a true guide to salvation: In the beginning was the Word.

The author of more than fifteen books, Stephen Jay Gould is also author of the longest-running contemporary series of scientific essays, which appears monthly in
Natural History
. He is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and professor of geology at Harvard; is curator for invertebrate paleontology at the university’s Museum of Comparative Zoology; and serves as the Vincent Astor Visiting Professor of Biology at New York University. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City.

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