The classic debate between Science and Religion is perhaps a little stale (I wrote a not very good essay on it in the late fifties at University) but I want to revisit the subject from a (to me anyway) fresh perspective. First of all the old debate nearly always and perhaps arrogantly substituted Christianity for Religion and I have to confine myself to Christian Spirituality. But at least I now know that the Renaissance, which enlightened so much in Christian circles actually was prefaced by an upsurge of interest and study of Ancient Greek learning in Damascus by the Muslims. Likewise we Christians confidently ascribe the remarkable spread of Christianity in the first century to the work of the Holy Spirit, while remaining totally silent on the equally remarkable spread of Islam later. All I can say about that at this stage is that if we Christians accepted a prayer discipline like those who pray to Allah, maybe we really could move mountains. Here is a good site for exploring Islam. I have no doubt whatever that had I been born in, for example Iran, I would be a Muslim. I wasn't, so I shall stay with Christian Spirituality and begin with an attempt to say what I mean by it:
Spirituality: Using a combination of Theology and Experience to reflect on our personal and corporate relationship to God. This relationship is expressed and nourished in: thought, prayer and worship on our part. It is developed and refreshed by the joy obtained whenever we recognise a Blessing, great or small, on God's part.
Remembering that Theology was once called the "Queen of Sciences": Perhaps it is possible to construct a similar description of Science which recognises the similar joy to be found in it. Since both have their "Eureka" moments:
Science: Using a combination of previously gained Knowledge and new Experiment to reflect on the workings of the Natural World and our relationship to it. This relationship is expressed and nourished in thought, hope and persistence on our part. It is developed and refreshed by the joy obtained whenever we recognise and systematise a new law which extends our understanding of Nature.
Let's make some comparisons:
Science is obviously concerned with the natural
observable and measurable World or perhaps Universe is better, while
Spirituality seeks to meet with God and understand His activity. It is
easy to see that historically these were very much the same thing. It is
only because Scientists developed their ideas faster than Theologians could
cope with (and both developed a professional arrogance about understanding
"The Truth") that a dichotomy has arisen.. The famous Monkey debate, essentially
between Evolution and Genesis chapters 1 to 3 now seems rather silly. Even
the Church Alpha Course regards
Genesis as "picture language" and neither Scientist nor Theologian expects
to see God from a space ship.
In the definition of Science I have used: thought, hope and persistence to replace the thought, prayer and worship of Spirituality. Scientific and Religious thoughts may seem to be rather different, but only because they take place in different disciplines with different personalities. By that I mean that those who pursue a particular discipline, whether it be physics or cricket, have to learn an esoteric language and take on a personality appropriate to all the other people in that discipline.
If we go on to compare Prayer with Hope, what scientist has not "prayed" that his experiment or pet project actually works and that he has not made any terrible mistakes. Meanwhile a praying Christian is doing so in the "sure and certain hope" he has been taught. So what about Worship, we all worship something or have a rather dull life. And anyone who really worships is certainly persistent, from the loyal football supporter of a team which never wins to the ever hopeful buyer of lottery tickets. But not all worship is good for us, most of the world's ills can be traced to the worship of Sex, Booze or Power. However the zeal (Worship) implicit in the great discoveries of Science have obviously brought great gain and I believe that God is just as pleased with that kind of worship as he is with Evensong in a Cathedral.
Ah, you say, dear reader but the real difference is whether you believe in the existence of God. Well whether or not our zealous scientist believes in God or not s/he certainly believes that there is some order, some rule, some law to be discovered. And how did s/he come by that belief? from, in the first instance being told so by a teacher and then by discovery and experience. This is exactly how one who engages in Spirituality comes by his/her belief in God. The belief in both cases is reinforced every time we have an experience of Joy which confirms what we believe: A result, a Eureka moment and just like Archimedes who is credited with the first Eureka, sometimes in the bath, rather than in Church or in the Laboratory.
So I conclude: Let not those who practise Science despise or fall out with those who practise Spirituality, rather let us recognise the similarities in the two disciplines and confidently hope that the latter will one day mature sufficiently to engage on equal terms with the former. And let not one practising Spirituality despise or fear the Scientist, because, as St Paul teaches, there is nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God.
Yes I confess that Spirituality is rather stuck in the Middle Ages, no less potent and important for that, Saint Francis still has much to teach us (humility and courtesy especially) which is why I am a member of the Third Order and webmaster for that site, even though I graduated in Mathematical Physics and spent my working life in the Nuclear Industry.
That working life taught me that however clever and elaborate our mathematical equations, we never came close to what the Nuclear Reactor was actually doing. Sure, we could predict results and even guarantee safety, but we were dealing not with Reality but Models of Reality and often quite crude models. Models are products of our imagination, not the real thing and they are constrained by that imagination and by the size of our computers. I am not sure that the present generation of Cosmologists really understand that Quantum Theory, Relativity and so called Chaos Theory are also models. I am proud to say that our models of contra-flow boilers were producing chaotic results long before the Meteorologists discovered that small differences in initial conditions produced very different weather forecasts. Jesus used models too, simple ones like The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. The Gospels call them Parables. They certainly do not encompass the whole of life: physical or spiritual, but they contain some understanding of both in much the same way as Quantum Theory contains some understanding of the nature of Atoms. Here is my own (very simple) staggering model of a Hydrogen atom. We are told by the scientists that the Nucleus has a size of about 10-13 cms. While the size of the atom is some 10-8 cms. So if we imagine the former as being like a child's ball say 10cms in diameter, then the atom would be 10 kilometres across. That's an awful lot of space inside compared to the size of the particles that inhabit it. It means that the "picture" of an atom like the one at the top of this page, with which we are familiar, gives quite the wrong impression.
The picture is actually the Bohr model of an Atom which is rather like a mini solar system with a central positively charged nucleus and negatively charged electrons orbiting it. Because energy levels are quantised, (The real significance of Quantum Theory, not "uncertainty") that is to say in discreet lumps or quanta, the electrons had to circle in discreet orbits and jump from one to the other as energy changed. This was very successful in explaining the results from crystallography, but it is not reality.
Modern models are only really explicable in mathematical equations, but are no more realistic in any sense. They ascribe, what to us in the Macro world seem to be, very strange multidimensional properties to that vast space in the atom. And why not! There is no reason whatever why it should be anything like the macro space that we experience. An interesting question to me is whether God can see into that inner space. That is not a daft question, upon it depends to what extent He is able to sustain and influence His universe. I suspect not, in the same way as I suspect that He is unable to predict the lottery numbers. If we dare to accept that limitation on God perhaps it gives some explanation of why He doesn't stop natural disasters nor the evil misuse of our free will, even though the Universe clearly exhibits a quite extraordinary degree of initial fine tuning to make our presence possible*.
All that amounts to my attempt to bring Science and Spirituality together or rather to bring Spirituality into the 21st Century, where many can still attest to actual experiences of God through Jesus Christ, without puzzling over Stephen Hawking's quest for what he calls the Theory of Everything. I have concentrated on Physics but if you do much the same with Biology, earnest worries about, for example, the Virgin Birth can also be relegated to their proper place. Then we can get on with trying both to follow our Lord and sensibly preach the Gospel, sustained by a rational Spirituality.