Science & religion: Theory, myth & humility

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals emerging stellar nurseries and individual stars in the Carina Nebula that were previously obscured. Photo by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

“Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and values – subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve … These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty).”

~ Stephen Jay Gould

Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life

Science and Religion have different but similar ways of talking about what they do not know for sure: “Theory” is the way Science composes its questions and findings of fact derived by observation and experiment; “myth” is the way Religion composes its questions and findings based on lived experience, reflection, contemplation of the unknown and values associated with and derived from consonant spiritual practices. That’s a short but I hope helpful way of seeing that these terms are not unlike each other – and that both, as the late Dr. Gould proposed, are legitimate fields of inquiry for the human mind.

It’s lame, but I’m fascinated by etymology, so please graciously endure what follows. It will be brief.

“Science & Religion,” by Peter-Jan Durieux (2021)

“Myth” is relatively new to English usage, according to my favorite online etymological site It started appearing in the mid-19th century, and it took just a decade or so to take on the meaning most associate with the term today: a false story. Some theologians and scholars have been trying to retrieve its true meaning ever since: from the Greek, mythos, “speech, thought, word, discourse, conversation; story, saga, tale, myth, anything delivered by word of mouth.” “Theory,” too, is relatively new to English (16th century): “contemplation, speculation; a looking at, viewing; a sight, show, spectacle, things looked at.” In Philosophy, these senses are said to derive from traditions associated with Pythagoras (6th century BCE).

Both terms are accounts that might be rendered “story” or at least, “narrative.” Both are ways of talking about what is “believed to be the case” or “true.” Both are said to be drawn from experience as interpretations of “data” or “information.”
“Story” seems to be a popular category these days. Everybody has one, it’s said. Our memories are said to be stories, how our minds construct the past into a kind of episodic narrative. God knows that memoir – the telling of one’s story, as distinguished from autobiography – has become the form of choice for countless authors in the marketplace of ideas. (The form is ancient, though. Augustine of Hippo is said to have written if not the first at least the prototypical memoir in the fifth century CE.) Perhaps the idea of “story” is not overworked if it’s really the way we form our sense experience into something resembling meaning, which is my subjective take on the world. I want it to be conditioned by what is real, what is actually and verifiably true, but that’s not the only way. There’s the way artists see it, and novelists and poets and theologians and mystics, as well as all those scientists out there who are telling me how the climate is changing more rapidly than anyone thought possible, and how we’re not changing our behavior soon enough to avert the direst consequences of global warming (or, if you prefer, “climate change”).
Myths and theories evolve. They are not static accounts, and I guess that’s a truism, but it needs to be said because I suspect that many people think otherwise. These are folks who don’t believe that what they believe is either mythological or theoretical but true. Now, there’s a term of endearment! Truth: What the hell is it, anyway?

“Mayan Science,” by Angel Ortiz

Damned if I know, frankly, so there’s no point in my going on and on about it, but it is pertinent to this discussion because no one who believes that what she believes is true is willing to say that it’s either a myth or a theory. I’m willing to say, though, that nothing I believe is true is anything but mythological or theoretical, because “truth,” so called, is nothing if not an evolving, moving target, whether we’re talking about science or religion. Thing is, neither science nor religion exists without myths and/or theories, all of which are subject to change based on our evolving awareness of the world – or, as we’re wont to say, anymore, The Universe.
Our “world” has expanded far beyond whatever concepts dominated the mind of humanity just 300 years ago; indeed, our global appreciation of what The Universe is has vastly expanded in my lifetime – and certainly within my personal frame of reference. When I was a child, the “universe,” was an abstraction; nowadays, we’re looking at photographs of its farthest reaches, so far beyond Earth’s horizon of what 16^th-century explorers imagined that, well, it’s simply unimaginable. The myths of my childhood – for example, that there is or was life on other planets of the Solar System – have become a scientific likelihood in light of the finite but innumerable possibilities of life, even “intelligent” life, elsewhere in The Universe.

The Lord Answered Job Out of the Whirlwind,” by William Blake

All of which is theoretical: Open to question, to further information or even to other theoretical possibilities from different and numerous perspectives – including religion, from which some of humanity’s most imaginative, compelling and even barbaric myths have come over the past 20,000 years or so (a millisecond of Universe Time).
In a sense, while theory is scientific myth, myth is religious theory, and while there is a profound difference in method between these ways of knowing and interpreting human experience, we must concede their similarities if we’re to respect the enterprise of both. The problem, as I see it, is that we all too often – perhaps most of the time – become wedded to doctrine, and that goes for scientists as well as religious believers. Doctrine is necessary, of course, lest we forget what we’ve learned and our knowledge disintegrate, but like everything else in The Universe, which never has been and never will be static, doctrine must evolve. It must change in order to give something resembling a “true” account of itself in light of humanity’s ever evolving and knowledgeable experience of itself in time and space.
Doctrinaire science looks askance at religion as does doctrinaire religion view science. As a formerly religious person – and not especially “spiritual” – I have to say religion comes away more damaged in this faceoff, but that doesn’t by a long shot irremediably damage religion (or, if you prefer, “spirituality”) as a way interpreting and appreciating one’s lived experience. (Without further comment, I would contend that spirituality is always a component of religion, which is not necessarily a dogmatic system, and that it’s preposterous to claim that one is ”spiritual but not religious.”)

“Return of the Prodigal Son,” by Kazuya Akimoto

The burden in the science-religion dialogue is always upon religion to give an account of itself in light of expanding scientific knowledge – and not by clinging to unscientific texts and traditions whose authors knew nothing of relativity, gravity, the Solar System or that light from some of the stars they saw was older than the Earth upon which they stood! Denial is simply not a standpoint from which to argue one’s case for religion. The artifacts of religion may be rooted in the past, even the distant past, but that doesn’t impose upon religious believers an obligation to live in the past themselves, but to reinterpret and, if possible, re-appropriate their signs and symbols in meaningful ways that keep intact whatever “faith” means to their respective communities. In real life, it means some adherents will fall away, but I suspect it also means that some will be attracted by what may be “renewal” of a given religious tradition.
It is not the burden of science to disprove anything – let alone religion, a universal human cultural activity – but to discover, to reveal that which was not previously known, whether it be the farthest galaxies of the Universe or the oldest expressions of religious belief on Earth. Scientific theories can and do often change over time, and it ought to be inspiring for religious persons to notice how science deals with controversy, at least in essence: Make your case, and if it makes sense and is consonant with what we actually know about a given phenomenon – even if it comports with what we believe – then we’ll agree to live with it unless and until our knowledge is transformed by new information and experience.
Underlying all of this discourse is the virtue of humility, though it’s not always easy to discern. There’s nothing scientific about that particular virtue, and some would say there’s nothing especially religious about it, either; that it’s a form of human goodness evolved through the thick and thin of our brief history, though very often in religious garb, and that it tends toward the benefit of all sides of a given issue. It’s a conversation I wish all humanity were more capable of: “I’ll do my best to understand and appreciate your history, traditions and beliefs.” Period, and without qualification.
And further: “I’ll be enriched by whatever insights I bring back to my own standpoint as I hope you will be enriched by mine.”
An unlikely encounter, perhaps, but – and where in the world would I get this? – there’s always hope.