Debate with Christopher Reiger about “A Call For Sacred Biologists”
by: Peter Gabel on March 15th, 2010 | 4 Comments »
Artist Christopher Reiger sent Tikkun an email expressing his differences with my piece “A Call for Sacred Biologists,” which his painting “submerged in his erotic mystification” accompanied in the March/April 2010 issue of Tikkun. I responded and a conversation developed. Our intern Sarah Ackley has edited our emails down to this post.
If I could sum it up in a phrase, I would say that Christopher is committed to the idea that science and religion are both valid ways of knowing but they are separate ways, whereas I believe we have to move towards a unified approach to knowledge (the nature of which I’ll take up in a forthcoming issue of the magazine). I was happy to have such a reasonable conversation about a topic that arouses such passion. We’ve laid out his emails as the indented quotes and mine as the text in between. Christopher Reiger has given us two recent drawings to accompany the exchange.
Reiger begins:
In “A Call for Sacred Biologists” Gabel explores the gulf between a strictly rational, scientific world view and that of, for lack of a better description, holistic panentheism. Gabel’s subject is near and dear to me, but his language unfortunately suggests that he has a deep-seated mistrust of, as he puts it, “the so-called ’scientific method’” (emphasis mine).
"A beating of kettles and cutlery, to scare the beast" by Christopher Reiger.
In the myopic, yet much ballyhooed skirmish between science and religion, I reside in the middle, as frustrated by the rabidly anti-religious as I am disturbed by and opposed to religious literalists and fundamentalists. Gabel, while not a religious literalist, uses language that patronizes and apparently misunderstands scientific endeavor. For example, he insists that we need evolutionary biologists “who connect the sacred within themselves to the sacred dimension of what they observe.” If he means that we need more leading scientists to openly discuss the awe and wonder they experience via observation of the material world, he needn’t worry: most of them are more than happy to do so! If, however, he is suggesting that evolutionary biologists should champion mysticism, orthogenesis, or notions of “a master plan,” he is expressing an irrational and anti-scientific bias. Biologists must be vigilant to not allow spirituality to cloud their work. By all means, biologists can be deeply religious or spiritual people, but, for science to remain legitimate, it must be materialist and reductionist.If scientific endeavor is mixed with mysticism, it becomes pseudo-science or, put another way, bunk.
At the article’s close, Gabel writes that “the theory of evolution [must] align itself with the truth that spirit and matter form an indissoluble unity.” To the contrary, the theory of evolution needn’t make any attempt to “align itself” with spirituality; it is its own truth, a scientific truth. As Rabbi [Arthur] Green writes in ["Sacred Evolution" Tikkun March/April 2010], “I recognize fully and without regret that theology is an art, not a science.We people of faith have nothing we can prove; attempts to do so only diminish what we have to offer. We can only testify, but never prove.”
As I wrote on my blog, Hungry Hyaena, in late 2008, “At their respective best, both science and religion (re)awaken or invigorate our capacity for wonder. Each makes use of a different approach, but they are complementary.” That full post is here.
I respond (and we’ll skip these indicators below):
I’m very respectful toward science as long as it does not claim too much for itself. Science should be aware that it produces limited truths based on the subjective choice to treat the world as an “object,” including the world of living phenomena. Usually, the scientific method does not so confine itself, claiming for itself an absolute objectivity and relegating spiritual interpretations to being merely subjective, a matter of opinion. I do not agree with these characterizations, and it is this marginalization of the spiritual that occurs in the evolution debate, with Darwin and natural selection usually taken as gospel as far as Truth goes. I do not think that “natural selection” is the motor of evolution, but the scientific method can’t help us to see that because it excludes the insights that would allow that to be known.
I don’t agree with you that we can’t obtain objectivity about spiritual insight. It just requires a different kind of search for objectivity than that pursued by materialism. To me, and I would say to us at Tikkun, spiritual truth is also “objective” but makes itself known by different methods from the natural sciences. I would like some of those methods to inform the interpretation of evolution.
Rabbi Green asserts that there is no conflict between science and religion, and that religious people can understand science for what it is, namely another human tool for exploration of the material world, one which opens us to new avenues of wonder and knowledge (and, in turn, new questions). Importantly, he does not assert that science should square itself with theology or metaphysics. Theology, he writes, is not a science. Likewise, science is not metaphysics. Science has no way to deal with the immaterial. Yet your article called upon (even challenged) scientists to align evolutionary theory with “the truth” as understood through a metaphysical lens. That is to say, you call for science to square itself with metaphysics. I believe strongly that it should do no such thing. Any attempt on the part of science to do so would render the scientific enterprise impotent (and be irrelevant to metaphysics).
To be sure, science has developed something of an attitude problem. We must address this arrogance, lest a vital part of our human makeup be neglected (or worse). But the problem of science’s haughtiness should not be addressed by insisting that one of our most useful instruments be used in a way that it has not been designed to be used. Rather, it needs to be addressed in a challenging dialogue that respects the methods of all modes of inquiry.
You trust empirical perception as a basis for knowing something that you can stand behind as true and expect others to acknowledge as true, but you don’t trust your intuition of “the immaterial” (what you call “metaphysics”) as having that same power and universality. I think that’s too bad and hope you’ll reconsider that. I think we humans do share common insights into “the immaterial” and have to give each other the confidence to say so and to work it through in an interpretive community that is constantly refining intuitive insight for accuracy and subjecting it to critical, intersubjective reflection. This can be done, but it’s a very different approach to “science” than the prevailing method, and it can be done while preserving what is valuable in the current natural science method with its pursuit of provisional verification of materialist hypothesis.
Counter to your assertion, I do “trust [our] intuition of “the immaterial”…as having that same power and universality.” Indeed, it has more power and universality than does science, but this variety of Truth is grounded in belief and faith (rather than empirical knowledge). As such, it has no bearing on scientific truths, which operate wholly within the realm of material observation. I know scientific truths and I believe some theological Truths. The latter is informed by the former, but the former is not seasoned with the latter.
By no means do I intend to suggest that scientific truths are necessarily incompatible with theological Truth. Rather, both types of truth/Truth are valuable and vital to humanity and, in turn, the Everything (and the No-Thing, to put it apophatically). I continue to insist, however, that “the prevailing method” of science must not be affected by our “common insights into “the immaterial,” even as I concur that every person should nurture a more holistic understanding of G-d (or whatever name they might call It). The reason that I reacted against your article (as I read it) is that instead of calling for earnest dialogue between [science and religion], each sphere of inquiry bringing to the table what it can and will without sacrificing their distinct character, the article demanded of science a face lift, essentially stating the language of the scientific sphere should reflect that of the religious.
Finally, I agree with you wholeheartedly that we should forge an interpretive community for critical, inter-subjective reflection. Science should be a part of the discussion, but should take pains to not dress itself up as something other than it is; it should bring its truths to the table on its terms.
"Arrival at the shore" by Christopher Reiger.
It seems that you’ve got two selves and two worlds, the mystic and the materialist, side by side, each in its domain. I’m very much in agreement that your stand on this is possible; nothing about science excludes a mystical and religious reality within which material reality and scientific knowledge of that material reality unfolds.
However, for me there is only one world, the spiritual-material, spirit enlivening material form. To take this world as an object therefore is to act on it and impoverish it, although sometimes for a noble and valuable purpose (western medicine!). But ultimately I am for reuniting knowledge with spirit as manifested in form, including restoring meaning/desire/intention to evolution (but not some perfect intelligent design). To me, natural selection in the service of survival undoubtedly does occur and has a modest role in the unfolding, but the larger unfolding of spirit through historical form is what I hope will one day be studied by a new kind of naturalist, a “literary” naturalist who aspires to tell the true story of the species as a spiritual/material adventure, working in a new kind of scientific community that provides the correcting, intersubjective reflection verifying by discourse and observation what’s taken as provisionally true.
Those with a more open mind on this subject may wish to read the letter that I wrote long ago regarding the apologetics of the leaders of the American Association for the Advancement of Science:
Conflict Between Science and Religion?
The editorial by AAAS Chair Gilbert S. Omenn and CEO Alan I. Leshner in The Wichita Eagle entitled “No conflict between science and religion” (1) appears to have been good politics, as it may have helped to overthrow the anti-evolution board members in Kansas. But is this approach good for science? As scientists, we are duty-bound to tell the truth. It is simply not true that there is no conflict between science and religion. That’s what the whole debate is about in the first place. The conflict has persisted for centuries and probably will continue for centuries more.
As scientists, our experience with the external world has led us to conservative assumptions that are in opposition to the extreme assumptions of traditional mythology (2). We assume, for example, that matter and the motion of matter neither can be created nor destroyed (conservation). The opposing assumption, creation of something from nothing, has no experimental proof and thus must be regarded as the more extreme view. To soft-pedal the contradiction between conservation and creation is a detriment to science. Indeed, the usual obfuscation typical of the last century now has led us to a so-called “scientific” theory that speculates that the entire universe could be created out of nothing. We should welcome the open debate, for pedagogical reasons if nothing else.
Glenn Borchardt, Director
Progressive Science Institute
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1. Omenn, G.S., and Leshner, A.I, 2006, No conflict between science and religion, The Wichita Eagle: Wichita, KN. http://www.kansas.com
2. Borchardt, Glenn, 2004, The ten assumptions of science: Toward a new scientific worldview: Lincoln, NE, iUniverse, 125 p.
The second reference has been expanded into a book, “The Scientific Worldview: Beyond Newton and Einstein” (iUniverse, 2007), that clearly shows why the conflict will continue despite the many claims of religious proponents that it doesn’t exist. In particular, the book shows what happens when we use consupponible assumptions that lead to scientific rather than religious conclusions. Mixing and matching science and religion may give some folks peace of mind–even a Templeton prize–but it is of no benefit to science, other than to engender financial support from those who still believe.
Interesting thread. Reading it made me hunt down something I read about subjectivity that impressed me. It may or may not have relevance to this discussion, but I hope it thrills readers as much as it did me. It’s a reading/transcription of Brian Swimme’s explanation of subjectivity in CANTICLE TO THE COSMOS #4 that was included in AN AMAZING JOURNEY! published by Global Education Associates Upper Midwest.
“Quantum physics can help us understand subjectivity. The basic understanding in Newtonian physics is that light bounces off a rock into your eyes. This isn’t what is taking place. The photon of light interacts with the electron of the rock and an entirely new photon is given off. The rock absorbs the sun’s light into itself and then expresses itself, giving off its own rock-light. The photon is the self-disclosure of the rock.
“The only information that we ever get is when a thing discloses itself and we are there to respond. The rock discloses out of its infinite, mysterious depths. The notion of a rock existing here, in one place, simply located is complete false. The rock is here, but its presence is everywhere it makes itself felt.”
This poetic language explaining scientific facts/theories is what allures me to understand life, our world, the universe in a heartfelt and memorable way. Science textbooks are dry and boring to the average person who generally isn’t attracted to science. The language doesn’t easily lend itself to a repetitive narrative for most people.
Maybe, just maybe this devotion to a sterile, objective language evolved with scientists’ need to carve out a wee space for itself through Christendom in the West. I don’t know if scientists experienced pressure from Islam or any other religious state during the Middle Ages forward.
However, objectivity is now deeply engrained and inseparable from science – as it must be. I choose to “adapt” to scientific knowledge from those who interpret the facts with language that inspires me. Maybe the way these “inspirational” scientists interpret the facts go too far for “just-the-facts” scientists.
Oh well. All I can say is that I’m very interested in the theory of evolution, and that interest was engendered by people like Brian Swimme and the late Thomas Berry. Dream of the Earth, a non-profit organization of which I am a board member, wants to help average people, especially young people, to understand evolution within the context of the Whole Story. I would think that traditional scientists would be happy with that.
I have to agree with Glenn Borchardt with respect to an inherent tension–I don’t think it’s by any means always a conflict–between science and religion. The source of the tension is simply this. Science by definition is about finding physical explanations for patterns (often referred to as “regularities”) of physical phenomena. The issue is not whether these explanations are “objective” but whether they are a) credible, b) supported by the evidence they purport to explain, and c) falsifiable in principle by additional evidence and a new and superior explanation. Religion, by contrast, seeks to explain at least some physical phenomena as the result of inherently untestable and therefore unfalsifiable *metaphysical* causes, such as the will of God or “the beautiful effort of the soul to manifest itself more and more fully through the unfolding of historical forms.” Science thus exerts a continual pressure on religion as it closes the explanatory “gaps” that religious beliefs or other metaphysical speculations seek to fill.
Charles Darwin posited the theory of evolution by natural selection at a time when there were two main theories of the origin of the forms of life on earth–one falsifiable in the scientific sense, the other not. The falsifiable one was Lamarck’s theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, which Peter Gabel seems to support with phrases such as “the panda’s long and eventually successful struggle to grip bamboo with an opposable thumb.” This notion was long ago shown to be false; acquired characteristics are not inherited, period. Consequently there would have to be a metaphysical mechanism for any such “struggle” as Peter Gabel posits–which rules it out of science. The unfalsifiable (and hegemonic) theory was William Paley’s argument from design, because however clumsy and cruel the Divine Designer’s work may seem in many cases to be, one cannot *dis*prove that a Designer exists and is operating. What one can do, however–and what Darwin and subsequent evolutionary biologists did–was apply Occam’s Razor, the principle that in the quest for understanding, one should always opt for the simplest explanation that covers the facts. The Divine Designer is not only, *on the evidence*, clumsy and cruel, but unnecessary.
That said, I suspect that the theory of natural selection as posited by Darwin (and Russel Wallace) and developed in the “Modern Synthesis” with genetics over the last century is about to suffer the same fate as Newtonian mechanics after relativity and quantum mechanics. That is, it will serve as useful approximation and partial explanation of some evolutionary phenomena. Evidence is accumulating around the edges of the neodarwinist consensus that evolution is driven by a number of other factors than natural selection. For example, it now appears that, in the early (pre-photosynthetic) biosphere, non-nucleated organisms like the archaea and the bacteria evolved not by natural selection but by gene-swapping and by creating networks of chemical communication. These capabilities persist to this day: bacteria inside our bodies share “consensus” chemicals that allow them to collectively resist threats like antibodies and for that matter antibiotics, and viruses are still spreading genes around via RNA transfer. Moreover, some genes that don’t particularly contribute to “fitness” (always contextual, of course) get “free rides” by being linked to genes that do; and according to recent statistical analysis of speciation trees, random mutation turns out to be a much bigger factor (about 70%) in the formation of new species than natural selection (about 6%). Moreover, “evo-devo” (evolutionary developmental biology), which postulates that maternal hormones that function as “switches” for genes in the offspring play a huge role in morphology and hence complicate the selective process, is now getting new respect, as are biophysical (pigs can’t grow wings) and biochemical constraints on evolution.
In sum: Peter Gabel is right to suggest that there has been a kind of doctrinal orthodoxy around (especially) gene-centric neodarwinist explanations over the last thirty years, led by that able publicist and intellectual bully Richard Dawkins. But the the breaking of this orthodoxy and the emergence of results that call it into question or flat-out contradict it is occurring, precisely, *within science*–that is, within the realm of reproducible results and falsifiable hypotheses. (For earlier excellent science-based critiques of Dawkinsist neodarwinism, I recommend *The Collapse of Chaos* and *Figments of Reality* by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, and of course the work of Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge among others.)
I’ll conclude with a few more speculative thoughts. Cohen and Stewart point out in *The Collapse of Chaos* that in our universe, “complexity is downhill.” This can be easily demonstrated by so-called “artificial life” games that start with simple algorithms for the combination and elimination of say, black squares on a grid. Through many iterations, semi-stable configurations of black squares appear, reproduce, “feed” on each other, mutate, and die out, in a manner suggestive of that of organisms and species. Cohen and Stewart go on, in *Figments of Reality*, to use games as a metaphor for understanding evolution. But even more interestingly, given the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that the orderliness of a closed system must remain constant or decrease over time, this tendency to increased complexity–*built into the very structure of mathematics and computation*–is puzzling.
A related puzzle is the problem addressed by the various versions of the Anthropic Principle (Weak, Strong, and Participatory): how is it that the universe, brought into being with incredible violence by a singularity about 14 billion years ago, has the absolutely precise balance of fundamental constants–Martin Rees’ famous “just six numbers”–to support the formation not only of stars but of planets and life? The Weak (WAP) version says simply that if those constants were not as they are, we would not be here to observe them. The Strong (SAP) version adds as a corollary that our presence to observe them makes it necessary that those constants should be as they are. The Participatory (PAP) version, originally championed by the great physicist John Wheeler, argues that by observation, we are bringing the universe that supports our existence into being. Wheeler’s argument was long ignored by most physicists as a charming but implausible extrapolation of the observer-dependence or Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM). However, the accumulating evidence from what are known as “delayed-choice” experiments involving pairs of entangled particles confirms that the absence of time-directionality in the basic math–not only of QM but of all fundamental physics–is not a flaw but an accurate expression of reality. It now seems increasingly likely, therefore, that causality works backward as well as forward in time, which would confirm the PAP. This view is gaining respectability from the proposals of no less a personage than Stephen Hawking. Hawking argues that, since at the moment of the Big Bang time and causality as we know them did not exist and reality was essentially a single Schrodinger wave function combining all possible “histories” of the quantum system, we as observer-participants (and presumably other sentient beings on other planets) are perhaps “retroselecting” the histories that would give rise to us.
Once again, not one of these notions is metaphysical, even though empirical tests have not yet been devised for some of them. (For current work and ideas in this area, see *inter alia* Paul Davies’ outstanding *The Cosmic Jackpot*.) But they do suggest that the mechanistic orientation of science since Newton is likely to undergo a radical alteration–something like what Thomas Kuhn referred to as a paradigm shift–in the not-too-distant future. That this transformation will confirm any metaphysical causality I am inclined to doubt. But fundamental questions like “why is there something rather than nothing?” remain unanswered and I suspect unanswerable by science. If one’s personal experience gives one to believe that beneath all this is a universal and evolving Love or Being, that’s fine. But the moment such intuitions–which I happen to share–cross the line into explanations for specific physical phenomena, I will object, for all the reasons others like Glenn Borchardt have expressed.
Love, knowledge and…
Seekers of spiritual knowledge might ask, “What’s love got to do with it?” Devotees of devotion reply, “Divine love is everything.” In mystical “marriage,” divine union, you can’t have one without the other. Divine Love and divine Truth are One in divine Reality.
In Sufism of Islam, knowledge is the key which opens the lock of love. Ma`rifa, spiritual knowledge, is essential to properly guide those who are intoxicated with mahabba, love for the divine. They are two of the last stations on the mystical path. Sufism often uses exquisite poetry to convey our longing for the divine. Some of the verses were considered too erotic by orthodox Muslim clerics. Sufis say that they are just allegories to express the inexpressible.
In Hinduism, bhakti is our devotion in love and adoration of the divine. Jnana is knowledge of the way to approach the divine. Both are considered paths to realize divine union and to be released from samsara, the cycle of birth and rebirth. The way of devotion is the preferred path of most Hindu movements, as in many orthodox religions; the way of knowledge is emphasized in Vedanta; preferred and emphasized, perhaps, but they are not mutually exclusive.
The “Song of Songs” (Song of Solomon) in the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, are a series of love poems which may appear to be secular. Both Jewish and Christian mystics, however, interpret them as love of God for his people. The “mystical marriage” is mentioned frequently in the Kabbalah of Judaism and by Christian mystics, although the latter often allude to love between Jesus and his faithful. Divine union is the joining of the lover and beloved; it is also the unity of knower and known. Love and knowledge are coequal and complementary.
All Buddhists are devoted to the Buddha; many may also worship bodhisattvas and celestial gods or goddesses. They do not “love the divine” in the common, theistic sense, but that which is found in highest spiritual experience. Sanskrit prajna, the direct awareness of sunyata, emptiness of self, is the perfect wisdom. Love is usually expressed as loving kindness, universal love for all beings…a concept and virtue shared by the traditions of mysticism in all religions.
This life’s mortal loves, mundane truths and worldly realities are finite and transient. In the divine One, endless Love, absolute Truth and ultimate Reality are infinite and eternal.
(quoted from “the greatest achievement in life,” my e-book at http://www.suprarational.org )