Science and Two Ethical Systems: Buddhist and Christian

Buddhist ethics and science
In his brilliant book, Morals Not Knowledge, John Evans has argued that 

“Religion and science are the two great ways of understanding the world, but by understanding I mean the relationships between humans in the world and the relationship between humans and nature. These are stuff of morality….” John Evans

Even more, Evans asserts when conflict between the two occur, the lion’s share happens at the level of “morals, not knowledge” (and thus the title of the book).

This conflict obviously rears its head for many with "God or evolution." Since that's often true in our country, where Christianity is the dominant religion, what about Buddhists? The simple answer: they don’t carry this burden, partly because they don't believe in a Creator God. 81% of American Buddhists accept evolution. Pew Research states quite simply, 

“Many Buddhists see no inherent conflict between their religious teachings and evolutionary theory. Indeed, according to some Buddhist thinkers, certain aspects of Darwin’s theory are consistent with some of the religion’s core teachings, such as the notion that all life is impermanent.” Pew Report

I mention this because if one begins with the connection of all sentient life, like Buddhism does, then it’s not hard to links to evolutionary thought. In fact, the Buddhist scholar Inoue Enryo argued that Buddhism can embrace evolutionary thought because it holds to “no sharp distinction between humans and animals as Christians claim….” 

Moreover, it’s therefore no grand step to the Buddhist commitment to ahimsa, or non-violence, for all sentient beings. This, of course, can come into conflict with scientific research, especially animal testing. In their research collected in the book, Science and Secularity, Elaine Howard Ecklund and her colleagues quoted a Taiwanese biologist commenting, “Buddhism is about not killing.” 

Christian ethics and science
Recently, when I was talking with a pastor who heads a Hispanic Christian ministry, he told me this, “Many Latinos drive trucks. And, in the next ten years, those jobs will be lost to Artificial Intelligence. I want to encourage my flock to be creating AI.” The effects of technology and science often displace jobs, and so we arrive at justice, one of the ethical foundations of Christianity (which it, of course, adapts from its Jewish roots).

Many believers see Christianity, like many other religions do, as a way of life, not ultimately intellectual content. Again to draw from Evans, “Evolution versus creation,” for example, isn’t ultimately about doctrine, in this view, but about the implications for ethics. Does the theory of natural selection lead us to see all people as simply the products of blind, undirected processes? Not really, as I've posted before, but that's where the conflict starts.

Among other insights from her social scientific research, Ecklund has similarly highlighted that Christians are particularly drawn to sciences that involve healing—i.e., ethical action in the world that reduces suffering. In her book Why Science and Faith Need Each Other, Ecklund observes that Christians and non-Christians both express “a great deal of confidence in medicine.” This correlates with a focus on Jesus, who is reported in the Gospels to be a healer. As Ecklund observes,

"Jesus’s ministry on earth involved touching those whom others would not touch, healing those whom others thought were beyond healing. Christians holding this theological view can see medical technologies as created by God for us to use to relieve our suffering and the suffering of others." Elaine Howard Ecklund

Philip Clayton has highlighted stem cell research, warfare technology, CRISPR gene editing, and he reserves his attention for global climate and sets Christianity within the “three Abrahamic faiths [which] go back… to the Book of Genesis, which calls believers to cultivate care for the earth.” Nature for them is “a creation of God and therefore a thing of great value.” This indeed leads to ethical action not simply for other humans, but for the Earth.

SEYA & CSL

As September comes to a close, two significant dates converge for me: September 26 marked the one-year anniversary of the publication of my book, C. S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian, and today (September 30) signifies the completion of the 16-month grant project I've been directing, SEYA (Science for Students and Emerging, Young Adults). In my previous post, I offered an overview of SEYA's findings, and here I'd like to ask one more time: What did I learn, and does "St. Clive" (aka C. S. Lewis) have anything to add?

With one long (perhaps even run-on) sentence, I'll summarize the strategy that emerged from this project: 

As a result of SEYA, I’ve discovered that there  is interest among emerging adults (ages 18-30) on how to integrate mere Christianity with mainstream science, and the strategy for this integration is to connect it with pressing life issues through a robust biblical hermeneutic, through relationships of trust, through skilled communicators, and through the use of high-quality and high-impact resources.

How do I evaluate the current "state of the question," as academics like to say? Is the integration of mere Christianity and mainstream science happening? Certainly, if we listen to Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins, it's all for naught. But they may not have the full story. As Elaine Ecklund has discovered in her research--some of the most comprehensive to date:

"76 percent of scientists in the general population identify with a religious tradition" and "85 percent of Americans and 84 percent of evangelicals say modern science is doing good in the world." 

Both the qualitative analysis of our SEYA surveys with target groups of approximately 100 emerging adults, as well as the two-dozen in-depth interviews I conducted, indicate that there is interest among 18-30 year olds and that high-quality resources makes a significant difference in emerging adults' attitudes toward integrating Christian faith and mainstream science. (For you statisticians out there, the p-value on this sample group was .001.)

I think we still need more skilled communicators who, first of all, employ a robust (and thus not literalistic) biblical hermeneutic. For one engaging example, see Dave Navarra (from the SEYA team) and Scott Farmer take on the topic, "Hasn't Science Disproved God?" 

Of course, we could simply go back to Augustine who insisted that Christians shouldn't ignorantly talk nonsense about astronomy and other fields in their exposition of the Bible. "Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn." (The longer quote is in the Endnote.) 

It's true--we can't be stuck in a biblical approach that ignores scientific insights. Though John Calvin could be about as hard-headed as they come, he never tired of learning from secular (i.e., non-Christian and non-biblical) writers, and he wrote quite pointedly on this all the way back in 1559,

“If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God."

We know that God created the world--and we properly worship our Creator as a result--but we can't be sure how God did it from Scripture, because, for one thing, the Bible doesn't address that issue.

In fact, the Bible is concerned with something else entirely: our transformation as followers of Christ. As Lewis phrased it in Reflections on the Psalms, God's revelation in Scripture is not "something we could have tabulated and memorised and relied on like the multiplication table," as convenient as that would seem. This approach, however, is misguided. Instead Lewis presented one central component of a more robust, biblical hermeneutic: 

Follow the intent of the text. Read what it says, not what you want it to say.  

Instead of imbedding a math table in our brains, Lewis wrote, we take Jesus seriously and discover something unexpected:

"He will always prove the most elusive of teachers. Systems cannot keep up with that darting illumination. No net less wide than a man's whole heart, nor less fine of mesh than love, will hold the sacred fish."

And so, with Lewis in mind, I arrive at two elements of the strategy SEYA identified that we are still lacking: skilled communicators who present a sound approach to science and Scripture. I realize, of course, that Lewis wasn't perfect nor was he a scientist, but he did grasp the effects of science on the wider culture and expertly articulated mere Christianity in that cultural context. And so we could certainly use more of his ilk. He called it "translating" and left us with a question that has not been satisfactorily answered: 

"People praise me for being a translator. But where are the others? I wanted to start a school of translation."

Where indeed are these translators who understand the glories, challenges, and intricacies of science and bring mere Christianity to a scientifically and technologically saturated age? Part of the work I've been about with SEYA is to identify these translators--and perhaps to become one myself--but there's much more left to do.


Endnote: Here's the full citation from Augustine's Literal Meaning of Genesis (Bk. 1, ch. 19): "Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field in which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although "they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion."

A Few Reflections on Scientists in Congregations

Just a few months ago, I wrapped up my work as co-director of a three and half year, $2 million grant project, Scientists in Congregations (or SinC). This project funded 37 congregations with over 6,000 members in 25 states (and two other countries) to create programs that catalyzed the engagement of science and faith. 

Time offers the opportunity to reflect. So I've started to meditate on what I've learned. Here's the beginning of those thoughts...

Where did SinC discover an impasse or gaps in understanding science? The facts of science can be daunting. Celebrated MIT historian of science Thomas Kuhn noted 50 years ago that part of being involved in science is to learn its dominant paradigms and procedures. And those are complicated. So few outside of the community “get it.” And conversely, most scientists are neither taught, nor rewarded to communicate to the wider public.

And the reverse is true: few churches asked scientists to reveal their discoveries. SinC also had some discoveries about the task before us, and here I cite the noted Rice sociologist, Elaine Ecklund from Sciencevs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think

Dispelling stereotypes of atheists, reaching out to the spiritual-but-not-religious scientists, and mentoring and involving scientists within faith communities would mean that leaders within houses of worship would need to do a better job of integrating science and scientists within congregational life.

And I repeat: "integrating science and scientists within congregational life" since most scientists don’t feel all that integrated. Fascinating to me were the scientists who declared that the SinC project let them “come out of the closet” (their words). I mean, when over half of church youth are destined for a science-related field and only 1% of youth ministries offer one science-related topic per year, it’s no wonder that becoming a scientist as a churchgoer sometimes seems as supported as starting a career as pawn shop owner. One solution would be for the church to invite scientists to tell us more about their discoveries of this glorious world that God has created.

I’m reminded of my brilliant pastor-theologian colleague at First Presbyterian Church in Boulder Colorado, Carl Hofmann, who pastors in a town that has more PhDs (I’m told) per capita than anywhere else in the country. That presumably means more doctorates in science. We put together a dinner with their planning team in beautiful downtown Boulder nestled just below stunning mountains (but I’m beginning to digress), and the scientists kept telling us, “This feels so confirming to everything I do as a Christian.”

And so it does. And so it should. It would to Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and James Clerk Maxwell. And to John Calvin too, who wrote of insights from authors outside the Biblical texts, 

If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God.

I also discovered that few parishioners had a means of interpreting the Bible as instructive as Calvin’s—one that integrates truth from other fields effectively. The idea that Scripture may not ever be intended, or read through the centuries, as a scientific text—but instead one that radiates profounder meaning—escapes many parishioners. So the people in the pews either leave aside the text as irrelevant or reject science as antithetical to faith. 

SinC worked to provide something beyond these two dismal options. And I'm glad to say it did--it has to be a primary reason that 96% of our congregations told us they would continue programs in science and faith after their grant money ran out.