Honest Doubt Part 8 - Vacating Heaven

This program was the perhaps frequently told story of the way science overcame religion. In the beginning religion said God was in a heaven that was a little bit above the clouds, then science came along and proved religion wrong. Along the way religious people persecuted the scientists because they had pissed them off for being right.

Well, of course is a unique phenomenon. Even scientists didn't expect science. The first scientists - around the Elizabethan times - such as John Dee saw science as esoteric knowledge, like a special type of magic that would give power to those who studied it.

Now we think of science as being about objective, rational, empirical knowledge that in many cases allows us to make accurate predictions of future phenomena based on scientific laws.

But of course there is still much of the world that can't be predicted. In that case "science" just hopes to provide an explanation that will "save the phenomena" of what we know. But what if the subject being studied is linked to human action? Can that ever be accurately explained?

Here we have two solutions. Some scientists have argued that human behaviour/reality can be explained in simple terms - the sex drive, the drive to power, our social environment, lack of chemicals in the brain. This is the view that humanity - although appearing complex - is actually composed of very simple drives that can easily be explained. Such a "reductionist" view might believe that mental health issues can be solved by administering the right drugs for example.

The other solution - it can still be "materialist" in the sense of not believing in supernatural phenomena - believes the human reality is irreducibly complex and cannot easily be explained except in its own terms - in terms of the dignity of the human subject, in terms of morality and - yes - spirituality. In this sense you can't explain "morality" in terms of where it comes from, you can only explain it on its own terms, and the same is true of spirituality.

So has science overcome religion? The program suggested that the two are entirely separate. Well, that isn't historically true, it certainly was the case that for a significant period of time the two clashed, and we still haven't really understood what to make of a religion that is consistent with science. Yet it doesn't seem as if science will solve the problems addressed by religion, so for a while at last the two should be allowed to co-exist.