CAN SCIENCE AND RELIGION GET TOGETHER?

First part:

Based upon A sermon by A. Powell Davies, D.D.

Minister, All Souls' Church (Unitarian) Washington, DC

March 16, 1947

Abridged by Bill Chess for Sunday service April 16, 2000 at Nature Coast Unitarian Universalists

The second part, comments by Bill Chess

Dr. A. Powell Davies, for whom the Davies Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church is named, was a great minister, speaker, and leader of Unitarian Universalism, spurring growth in the denomination in the 1950's.

He was also a renowned social and political activist, as well as an author. Davies, who had previously been a Methodist minister, began his career as a Unitarian minister in 1933 in Summit, New Jersey. It culminated at All Souls Church in Washington, DC from 1944 until his untimely death in 1957.

I am going to quote from his sermon delivered March 16, 1947 at All Souls.

I have cut out about half Dr. Davies’ sermon. The first part was a labored lead-up to the point he was going to make. I think I have preserved the essence of what he is saying, certainly I have preserved that which I understand him to be saying.

Then after presenting Davies’ views, I will have some observations of my own. After my part of it, you may see how my readings this morning may be relevant.

Davies says:

No fallacy has done more harm than the widespread opinion that science and religion can divide the world between them: that certain provinces belong to the scientific method, such as physics, chemistry, biology, and so forth; and other provinces to religious insight, like conscience, personal integrity, social aims, and faith in God and human nature.

This is all wrong. There is no province whatever in the entire life of man from which science should be excluded; or religion.

I do not mean by this that the scientific method can be used at present for all possible purposes with equal success. Manifestly, it cannot. But every effort should be made to extend it until it can--or until it comes as close as possible to that standard. It is vital, as it seems to me, that the scientific method should be used as fully and promptly as determined effort can make it, in sociology and in psychology and in all that helps us to understand ourselves and human society.

If knowledge is power, we surely need this knowledge. We need to know how to bring up our children to emotional wholesomeness, so that they will not be spiritually distorted.

We need to be able to do the same thing with society as a whole. We have seen entire nations become psychopathic. Do we not require--and urgently--the best that scientific methods can bring us in understanding and controlling such things? It is the great deficiency of modern science that it has done almost too much in mastering the outer world, and altogether too little in affecting the inner world.

I contend with extreme emphasis that it is treason both to science and to religion to exclude the scientific method from the inner life of man. I also insist that such an exclusion is perilous. We need, above all, people who are equal to the problems they must solve: people who think well and think straight, and whose emotional life, whose spiritual life, is disciplined towards its hardiest and healthiest. We need the scientific examination of superstition and prejudice. We need the scientific separation of truth from error. We need all that science can possibly do for religion--and we need it badly.

As it seems to me, only the religion that admits this--indeed, proclaims it--can be such a religion as science may endorse. Let us have done with the mistaken view that life is divisible into two provinces only one of which is available to science. Let us understand that science is really a method, not in the least exclusive to the physical world, but a method of arriving at truth in any question whatsoever. it is only when we have understood this that we are entitled to recognize--as, of course, we must--that the scientific method cannot as yet carry us as far as we wish into the ultimate questions of religious faith.

What I mean, to be specific, is this: we can know scientifically that the creeds are mostly false; that there is no evidence for the kind of God the creed-makers had in mind; that Jesus of Nazareth is not God's only son, begotten before the foundation of the world; and that if Jesus was conceived of the Holy Ghost, then so are all men; that he was born naturally; that he did not rise physically from the dead, or ascend into a visible heaven; that there is no place where he would be able to sit at the right hand of God, this being an entirely anthropomorphic piece of imagery; that he will not come from "thence" to judge the quick and the dead--the quick and the dead being judged already, the quick continuously during the entire period they are alive, the dead by those who knew them and by their works that outlive them.

I need not complete this examination of the "Apostles' Creed." All this is superstition. We can know by the scientific approach to history how much of the Bible is valuable, and how religious beliefs really grew up. This is the sort of thing I mean by saying that science must enter the field of religion, or, putting it another way, that religion must become scientific. It is when we pass beyond this, and beyond what can be known--sufficiently known--psychologically, that we yield ourselves to a valid faith: to a faith that we have examined, that we have found reasonable, that we have tried to live with, and to base our lives upon. That and nothing short of it is the point at which, while remaining rational, we can open our hearts to realities that lie beyond the detailed examination of our minds.

This kind of religion--liberal religion--also maintains the open mind to future discovery. It is not restricted by a creed. When new knowledge comes, it entertains it sincerely and takes the consequences of it. It follows advancing truth, and sifts out all wisdom, both new and old, trying always to know what experience vindicates. it is only with this kind of religion that science can get together and remain scientific. It is only this kind of religion that keeps the door open for the scientific future.

So that I say it is a requirement--a scientific requirement --that scientists sift out the claims of religion and accept only what honestly persuades them. And unless they are less brave than they should be, they will tell plainly what it is. I also say that this is not a matter to be treated casually. It is essential that this kind of religion shall mould the character of individuals and shape the policies of nations. It is indispensable that this kind of religion raise the level of our common life. Otherwise, nothing that anything else can do will avail to save us.

If scientists support people in believing--or appear to support them: it comes to the same thing--that they can retain their old attitudes, and leave everything to a sort of nursemaid providence for which there is no evidence, instead of allowing the God-power in their own minds to guide their thought and the holy spirit of their own souls to cleanse their consciences, then it is a grave disservice.

It is even worse if it seems to endorse traditional churches that care more for their own dominion than for human betterment. That is why I am preaching this sermon. The immediate occasion was a reprint from a magazine--an article entitled, "Science Joins the Church." I asked at once, What Science? And What Church? Manifestly, science as such cannot join either a church or anything else, any more than art could, or history, or oceanography. Not even scientists can join the Church; they can only join a church. There is so much difference between churches that it is vital to know which church it its that scientists are joining. Science and religion are comparable; science and the church are not. The fact is, of course, that the title of the article is seriously misleading.

When scientists turn to religion, unless they forsake their scientific disciplines, they cannot possibly accept a traditional creed as binding. They must always be open to whatever persuades their intellects. They need a free church, and a free religion. If traditional denominations will provide this freedom, I, for one shall rejoice. They should provide it. In the present critical state of the world, they should want to provide it immediately; so that all the people who can possibly be united may be united--not to waste their moral energy in trying to believe incredible things and practice useless petty pieties, but so that all of which they are morally and spiritually capable may be mobilized to meet the need of this desperate hour.

I think that scientists do indeed have need of religion; of its basic faith, its moral responsibility; of its deeper insights, its wisdom, its inspiration. But let it be a genuine religion! When science and religion get together, let it be to mingle their resources on an honest, forthright basis. Let churchmen truly embrace the scientific method, and let scientists be loyal to scientific truth when they join a church.

When Sir James Jeans says that from the viewpoint of science, "the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine," let it be known that this is religion--but by no means an endorsement of the Apostle's Creed.

When Steinmetz is reported as saying that the scientists must turn over their laboratories "to the study of God, and prayer, and the spiritual forces," let it be said that Steinmetz was a Unitarian and a long way from approving the dogma of Papal Infallibility.

When Sir Arthur Eddington tells us that "the idea of a Universal Mind...is a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory," let it be clear that this is not in the least the same thing as corroborating the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

When Professor Arthur Compton tells us that "there is something of a non-physical nature which controls the action of the atom," let it be plain that he has not declared his adherence to the Westminster Confession.

And when Albert Einstein says he believes in God, "the God of Spinoza," let somebody look up what kind of God Spinoza believed in, and not suppose that it is the God of Monsignor Fulton Sheen.

It is only when we have abandoned concealment and pretence that religion begins to be powerful--not powerful in exalting a hierarchy or in making falsities seem to be true, but powerful in the hearts of men. It is high time that religion began to be powerful in the hearts of men. It is high time that we broke the bondage of the past and became liberated to the real possibilities of religion.

It is high time that we know that for religion just as much as for science, truth is supreme. Not truth dwarfed and cramped to be fitted into a formula that disfigures it; but truth set free--truth in the open light of earth and sky: truth as experience proves it.

Let the churchmen and the scientists both repent--the churchmen because of their pride, trying to shut up God in a box that only they can open; the scientists because of their aloofness, trying to exclude the truth of the heart from the search for knowledge. Let science and religion meet and mingle. Let there be only one truth, and let it be in the fullness of the soul's need that we seek it: but truthfully!

Then indeed shall it be as Tennyson pleaded: that

"...knowledge grow from more to more,

But more of reverence in us dwell;

That mind and soul, according well,

May make one music as before,

But vaster."

Now it’s my turn to comment. I think what is said in the sermon is right on the mark. But it doesn’t really address the point as to how science and religion are going to interact once they really get together.

He says that all those scientists who have various insights into something vaster than they have heretofore been able to handle with the scientific method- of course aren’t thereby endorsing the creeds of organized religion. But what are they to do with what they observe?

When Jeans says "the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine," sure he isn’t endorsing the apostle’s creed. But where does he go from here? Where do any of them go from here?

In the 40 some odd years since Davies’s sermon, there have been a lot more similar statements by other scientists. There is all the fuss about “string theory” and the make up of the universe, and all the other recent developments which are sounding more and more like theology.

In fact Freeman Dyson has won some prestigious awards for his work in trying to relate modern science with religion and philosophy. I see he can even write mathematical equations containing philosophical concepts mixed in with physics.

And some of all of the above sounds more like faith than science.

So where does it lead us thinking UU’s. We really haven’t given it much thought or discussion.

Another thing that bothers me about the Science and religion get together- we really haven’t made much progress on the scientific level in recognizing or studying the need of people to gather together in “religious societies” such as ours for mutual support and affirmation of our humanity. Science still isn’t successfully applied to the “spiritual”.

We as human beings know that there is something which binds us together and binds all of creation together. We have a hard time defining it and we can’t seem to capture it so that we can label it and cubby-hole it or test it with the scientific method. But we know that it’s there.

We UU’s certainly don’t want to do what religionists have traditionally done- which is to make up explanations which are both outlandish and incapable of proof. And then believe them as the literal truth.

But we also recognize that there is something there that so far at least can’t be subject to rigorous scientific examination. And we want to recognize it and give voice to it, whatever it may be.

Perhaps it’s because it involves feelings and non-verbal communication. Science really can’t handle things unless they are verbalized or submitted to mathematical examination. Yet there are things which seemingly are as real as all the things which can be verbalized and categorized.

One way of approaching the problem is something we already do. That is we take the traditional path. We use the old words. We use the poetry. We use the music. We even allow god into at least our music and sometimes into our orders of service.

I think this is ok- more than ok- it’s good. So long as we realize that it is metaphor. It is a way of expressing that which we so far can’t put into that box to be rigorously examined.

We have a rich heritage in all the various religions which attempts to translate the unknowable into forms with which we can interact. Our music and poetry and literature is rich with a rainbow of such forms- all metaphor of one kind or another.

I don’t think we need throw out the baby with the bath water. Instead we should utilize all that richness- but with our eyes and minds wide open as to what the sources are and the real meanings behind it all.

And I think my most important message this morning it this:

We UU’s will always be walking that line between the need to express the “spiritual” and the need to put everything into a box to be rigorously examined. It’s part of our heritage. We should recognize it, learn to live with it and use it, and not let it divide us.