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Can God be brought into the equation?: a review of Science and Religion: Are They Compatible edited by Paul Kurtz and Barry Karr (Gerald Schroeder, May. 27, 2003, Jerusalem Post)

The struggle to find compatibility between the materialist world of science and the faith-based metaphysical claims of religion has a very long history. According to Maimonides in his Guide of the Perplexed, for example one might consider a science without religion, but religion without science is an oxymoron. His suggestion that you need to understand how creation works before delving into the role of the Creator within creation, though, was such anathema to theologians of his time that his books were burned by Jews and Christians alike.

To bring this controversy up to date, editor Paul Kurtz has drawn together 39 essays under the title Science And Religion: Are They Compatible?

Sounds like the makings of a good debate. Unfortunately the title is woefully misleading. Kurtz is the founding chairperson of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and the Council for Secular Humanism (CSH). The essays in this book are taken from a conference co-sponsored by, among others, CSICOP, CSH and to round off the potential for a secular bias, the publisher of Free Inquiry Magazine. [...]

Unbelief in God and religion turns out to be a sign of maturity. And so Arthur C. Clarke of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame opines that "The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. The association is now counterproductive."

And yet a study of longevity on Israeli kibbutzim revealed quite the contrary. Published in the highly respected American Journal of Public Health, (March 1996), Dr. Jeremy Kark et al reported on the 16-year tracking of 3,900 secular and religious kibbutznikim. Kibbutz members tend to have longer life spans than the general population. The surprise of the study was that members of religious kibbutzim outlived their secular counterparts, to the extent that religious men lived longer than secular women.

It seems that Proverbs (10:27) got it right: "The fear of the Lord prolongeth days."

The basic question boils down to whether or not there is place for the metaphysical within the structure of what until recently was a purely materialist science. Plato found abhorrent the idea of Democritus and Aristotle, that only the physically perceptible exists. The Bible, a thousand years earlier, expressed similar sentiments.

J. A. Wheeler, former president of the American Physical Society, Princeton professor of physics, recipient of the Einstein Award, portrays the stance of today's science.
"When I first started studying I saw the world as composed of particles. Looking more deeply I discovered waves. Now after a lifetime of study, it appears that all existence is the expression of information."

The Bible agrees.

"I am wisdom. God made me the first of all creations" (Proverbs 8:12,22).

If the seemingly divergent fields of quantum physics and Bible are correct, then indeed we may literally be the idea of God, Mr. Kurtz and his 91% atheist colleagues notwithstanding. And that would answer the ultimate question with which both science and religion struggle. Why is there an "is"? Why is there something rather than nothing? For that answer both science and religion must turn to the metaphysical.

It's that inability to concede that science is an edifice built on the same metaphysics that they so loathe that makes the rational secular materialist humanist atheists such an endless source of amusement to us. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 7, 2003 9:43 PM