Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and Inferno has just published a new novel, Origin, that focuses on a revolutionary scientific discovery that claims to answer the question “Where did we come from? And where are we going?” It naturally deals with questions of how science aims to supplant religion as a source of answers, truth, and guidance.
It was certainly a fun read (he creates great suspense) and overall, it felt like the science was accurate, as well. The biggest problem was the believability of just how much this “scientific discovery” would actually change the minds of religious people.
In the New York Times review, Janet Maslin explains
In Origin, the brash futurist Edmond Kirsch comes up with a theory so bold, so daring that, as he modestly thinks to himself in Brown’s beloved italics, “It will not shake your foundations. It will shatter them.” Kirsch is of course addressing The World, because that’s the scale on which Brown writes.
Indeed, the book starts with Kirsch visiting a priest, a rabbi and an imam speaking to them at the Parliament of World Religions, wondering how his discovery would be received by the religious communities. But the only people Kirsch spoke to were those three men, and they were clearly meant to represent all Jews, Christian, and Muslims.
The PWR, though, has eight staff members, 30 board members, 58 board emeriti, 15 international advisors, and more than 10,000 people that are expected to attend the next meeting in Toronto. One priest, one rabbi and one imam could not possibly speak for all of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, let alone for “All religious people.”
We all discover our truths through our own specific lenses, and while science helps us gain an ever-more accurate understanding of the universe, religion gives us the worldview through which we see it. Yes, science changes and advances, but so does religion. And that’s why evidence and data don’t change people’s minds by themselves — we need a context and perspective in order to process that data.
After all, some scientists like Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking and Jerry Coyne make strong anti-religious arguments all the time. But I’ve never seen those arguments lead a religious person to say, “Ah, I’ve been wrong all along! Religion is a sham!” Similarly, some religious leaders make strong anti-science arguments. But I’ve never seen those arguments lead a scientist to say, “Ah, I’ve been wrong all along! Evolution is a lie!”
So how do we change that? By subverting the narrative. By finding religious leaders who can speak about the value of science and scientists who can speak about how they experience religion. As a recent study done by Elaine Howard Ecklund and others at Rice University argues:
In order to reach the large swath of the U.S. population who are religious, scientists and science communicators should be targeting religious leaders and communities. If religious leaders are indeed already being approached with questions about science, it’s possible they simply need the information in hand in order to translate accurate scientific information to the public or to connect religious people with scientists themselves.
When scientists talk about their faith or religious leaders share about the importance of science, that’s when minds can change. Perhaps my favorite example is one of the most important voices about climate change is Katherine Hayhoe. Yes, she’s a professor at Texas Tech. Yes, she has multiple peer-reviewed articles. Yes, speaks and writes widely about the dangers of climate change. But what makes her truly special is the audience she is able to reach — evangelical Christians. Why? Because she is an evangelical Christian herself. She has authority and respect in that world, and so she can actually help religious people embrace some uncomfortable science.
There will always be new scientific discoveries that will change our outlook. And religion will always have to respond, change and adapt. But even as science may “shake religious foundations,” it’s through the local, one-on-one relationships that we’ll be able to understand them.
Even if Elon Musk helps us colonize Mars or Ray Kurzweil proves that the singularity is coming, while religion will change, it will not die. Why? Because the people who will help us make sense of it will be the people whose opinions we respect.
Dan Brown got it right with by having Edmond Kirsch speak with members of the religious leadership to see how they might understand and respond to his scientific breakthrough. Whether religious leaders or scientific experts, as human beings, we begin by trusting our source. And while it might be dramatically powerful to have one rabbi, one priest, and one imam speak for “religion,” in real life, it’s the local, personal relationships that matter the most — they are the ones who really influence our lives.
(This post first appeared on My Jewish Learning’s Rabbis Without Borders blog).
The importance of context, which Mitelman emphasizes, was brought home to me in the infamous YouTube video of a conversation between Richard Dawkins and Wendy Wright, a creationist advocate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AS6rQtiEh8 (1.6 M views as of 11/2017).
After a lengthy recitation of evolution data, Dawkins asked her, “I have described a lot of evidence. Why don’t you believe it?”
Evidence for the scientific theory of evolution is not obvious or abundant, or it would have been known to people throughout history. But Darwin published his theory only 157 years ago. So why is this? Because the theory, like all good scientific theories, builds on a foundation of many principles, methods and presuppositions that have been built up over prior centuries. Many alternatives were proposed and rejected along the way to what we call modern science.
These established assumptions have now become so deeply rooted in our thinking that they have become what Polanyi called “tacit knowledge”. Their “truth” has become obvious, and to think otherwise has become impossible. Most scientists have not studied the history of science, so they tend to take scientific thinking for granted. But if one studies history, or visits other cultures around the world, one can still identify alternative systems and assumptions. Science, in other words, did not necessarily have to arise, nor is it not merely a matter of human progress. That is the conclusion of historians and anthropologists like Whitehead and Needham.
Creationism can be considered one of these alternative cultures. To engage this culture using the assumptions of modern science is bound to fail, because the two are based on a different set of assumptions: about what constitutes “evidence”, about what is meant by “nature”, “cause”, “chance”, “purpose”, and other common concepts. Meaningful dialogue is not possible until some agreement can be reached on the definitions of these terms. But this requires deep introspection to identify one’s tacit assumptions.
This is hard work, and hardly anyone engages in it any more. It includes both the “boundary work” of cultural anthropology and self-criticism. Truth is most likely to emerge in self-criticism, for why would one criticize oneself unless he/she is sincere?
Unfortunately for a dialog between (fundamentalist) religion and science, recent psychological research (sorry, I have no citations) indicates that people hearing “facts” that disagree with their beliefs often become more hardened in their beliefs. One thing that makes science more difficult for some to accept is that it may differ from “common sense”. In general the Earth seems flat but we, at least most of us, know it is a sphere. As for evolution, we all see that people give birth to people, dogs to dogs, etc. A perspective of change that generally must view far more than a lifetime’s experience can be difficult to accept. Those who are adamant about a belief discount things that may challenge it. By the way, I am a PhD Chemist and a biostatistician, as well as a non believer who, yet, thinks religion has something to teach us.