Ponderings about Another Voice

Way back on December 19, 2007, I started this blog. I confessed then that I would probably ramble around, bringing up many different topics from post to post. If you have been reading this since then, you, no doubt, would agree. I also confessed that I would probably make this issues oriented. I think the majority of my posts have dealt with some issue, rather than being an account of my life.

My modus operandus, whether in an academic setting or in a parish setting, has always been to bring up things that I hope would get someone to think. On this blog, I have followed that pattern as well. I have included things that struck my fancy, made me think about things from a different perspective, or outraged me. I frequently include statements from others with which I do not agree. I have never made claims for consistency in viewpoint. Consistency in that way is impossible for me as a gadfly.

All that said, I have questions for the readership of this blog. Has this little piece of the internet provided you with something to think about? Have you considered a position from a new angle from something you have read? Have you used something I have posted as a springboard to do some reading and research of your own?

I will be curious to hear your response.

Another view on science and religion

I realize that I have not added anything to this spot since last week. Part of the reason lies with personal issues. Part with my own struggle on whether to jump in on the aftermath of the Saddleback Valley forum or not. I don't think I will be able to resist dealing with the Saddleback forum and other politically related faith issues, but that is to come. For now, you may find some grins at seeing part of a piece that P. J. O'Rourke did for Science & Spirit, entitled On God. You can read the entire thing at: http://www.science-spirit.org/newdirections.php?article_id=744.

O'Rourke writes:

Faith depends upon belief in things that cannot be proved, and I can prove that more people flunk physics than flunk Sunday School.

"But science can be proved," a scientist would say. "The whole point of science is experimental proof." Yet we non-scientists have to take that experimental proof on faith because we don't know what the scientists are talking about. This makes science a matter of faith in men while religion, of course, is a matter of faith in God, and if you've got to choose...

Personally, I don't think you do. Science and religion both assert the same thing: that the universe operates according to rules and that those rules can be discerned. Albeit this does make it easier to believe in God than, for instance, organic chemistry. Just the fact of rules implies a rule maker while just the fact of mixing nitro with glycerin and causing an explosion does not imply a Ph.D.

I'm also given to understand that the rules of science begin to bend and even break at the extremes of the universe's scale. Down where everything is subatomic-sized, things tend to be a bit random with mesons, leptons, quarks, brilligs, slithy toves, etc., subjected to Strong Force, Weak Force, Force of Habit, and so on. Meanwhile, in the farthest reaches of outer space, matter, antimatter, dark matter, and whatsamatter are tripping over string theory and falling into black holes. God is not like that. He's famously there in the details, and He is the big picture.

In one way, however, faith in science does come easier than faith in God--if fear is any gauge of how real we believe a thing is. To judge by human behavior, people are not trembling before the Almighty much. But many of those same people are scared silly by science. They are frightened by a climate stuck in the microwave of technological advances, frightened by genetic modifications that may--who knows?--cross cabbages with kings and produce a Prince Charles, and naturally they are frightened by the clouds of mushrooms being grown in the science cellars of Iran and North Korea.

His assertion that faith in science does come easier than faith in God is pretty much on target, I think. We live with and are affected by the powers of science everyday. While many very faithful church people proclaim their faith in God, most of them don't act like they believe God is very real. God and the divine forces seem to be so taken for granted that we don't really think that God matters. I am not advocating that we return to the days of the 1st century world or even of medieval times, when everything that happened was seen to be the direct result of God's actions and that anything consumed - food or water included - could contain an evil spirit, but I wonder what would happen if we took the divine more seriously?