Clash of science and religion

I stayed behind yesterday afternoon after my scientific reasoning class ended, to talk with the professor for a few. Before the class had ended, he’d spent 5 minutes or so explaining why all of the articles we’ve analyzed thus far have been articles about evolution. Basically, it’s his way of getting the concept of evolution out there, to help people better understand it. Apparently when he started teaching the class 10 or so years ago, he would often have discussions about evolution as part of the class. However, he’s stopped having those, mostly because there’d be some religious people in the class who would get irate / refuse to even hear about it / etc. This in turn would make him [the professor] upset and frustrated, and in generally make a mess of the class. So, instead of having discussions, he selects articles about evolution for the class to analyze.

Considering what he had said, I was curious as to where he stood, ‘faith-wise’, seeing as that would certainly impact his opinion. He said that he essentially believes in a creator of some sort, but beyond that, it starts to get sketchy. In particular, he said he has trouble believing that Jesus rose from the dead; his science-leaning brain really struggles with that.

We got to talking about why some people get so upset over the whole idea of evolution. The usual thing that evolution seems to clash with is the idea that god created man. But, evolution doesn’t really go against religion or the concept of a creator, unless you read the Bible or other religious texts literally. Who’s to say there isn’t a creator of some sort who helped things evolve? Maybe it was in this god’s ultimate plan to start out with a table full of ingredients, and end up with a 4 course dinner. Who says he / she / it / whatever would automatically say, “eh, let’s just get the frozen dinner out and be done with it”?

My professor said something that really clicked with me, something that had never really occurred to me: science isn’t trying to disprove the idea of a god or gods. If you think about it, it’s not even within the sphere of science. How would you devise an experiment to test the theory of no god? Put a lightning pole up and say, “hey, you up there, if you hear me, strike that pole with lightning”? It can’t really be done. You run into the same problem with trying to prove what happens to people when they die. How would you ever test such a thing? I suppose you could round up some test subjects and kill them, but you’re going to have a hard time asking them about their experience beyond that point.
Scientists are just trying to figure out how stuff works. How fire works; how the solar system works; how (X) works. Try plugging ‘god’ into the X. How does god work? Who knows? How would you find out? How would you figure out such a thing?

After talking to him, I can see why my professor can get rather riled over the matter. It’s really easy to get stuck in a rut of thought, of viewing the world through tinted glasses (and I don’t just mean religious glasses). It’s difficult (maybe impossible) to see the world without any tinting in your glasses; so the next best thing is to view the world with lots and lots of different tints.

Another thing he said which I liked is, “Scientists really need to get a giant piece of chalk and mark off their territory. This is what we’re working on. We don’t care about questions of god or faith. The priests, ministers, philosophers, whatever can deal with that stuff. People need to understand this; science and faith are not automatically opposed.”

There are 1001 ways to view god or the lack thereof, but one of my favorite ones is the way the Buddha talked about it, when followers asked him if there was a god or gods:

“I’m not concerned with such questions. If there is, I’m still right where I’m at, facing the same problems. If there isn’t, I’m still right in the same place, facing the same problems. Instead of worrying about whether there is or isn’t, you should be facing the problems at hand.”