Environmental Claims Journal
ISSN: 1040-6026 (Print) 1547-657X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/becj20
Emerging Green Synergy in the Science/Religion
Relationship: From Conflict to Potentially Planet-
Saving Cooperation
Robert A. Michaels, Richard A. Hammerman & Heslley M. Silva
To cite this article: Robert A. Michaels, Richard A. Hammerman & Heslley M. Silva (2018): Emerging Green Synergy in the Science/Religion Relationship: From Conflict to Potentially PlanetSaving Cooperation, Environmental Claims Journal To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10406026.2018.1504381
Published online: 03 Oct 2018.
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ENVIRONMENTAL CLAIMS JOURNAL https://doi.org/10.1080/10406026.2018.1504381
Emerging Green Synergy in the Science/Religion Relationship: From Conflict to Potentially Planet-Saving Cooperation
Robert A. Michaelsa, Richard A. Hammermanb, and Heslley M. Silvac aRAM TRAC Corporation, Schenectady, New York; bRabbi Emeritus, Congregation B’nai Israel, Toms River, New Jersey; cUniversity Center of Formiga/MG, Brazil
ABSTRACT Nature has inspired awe throughout history, stimulating scientific study often conflicting with theology. Conflict is manifest as promotion of creationism and its euphemisms in school curricula, and science denial, recently in the U.S. Government. Unification, however, is an emerging reality for the science/ religion relationship, driven by convergent evolution of each toward saving our shared planet from ourselves. No longer can religion deny science, nor science overlook the power of religious institutions toward achieving our common existential goal. The science/religion relationship, often portrayed as static, has proved dynamic, with emerging green science and green religion cooperating toward creating potentially planetsaving synergies. Introduction Science and religion
Mr. Bryan, do you know the age of this rock? Clarence Darrow Mr. Darrow, I’m more interested in the Rock of Ages than in the age of rocks. William Jennings Bryan
Over many millennia, finding meaning (Gordon 2015) or its absence (Weinberg 1977) have been products of human curiosity about the nature and complexity of our universe, our world, and most especially of life. To religious people, complexity in a chaotic universe may imply design, a designer, and therefore a deity. Proof of this premise in the form of scientific evidence is beyond reach, but unnecessary. Faith in the truth of
received wisdom, often based upon events or imagined events that were interpreted as “miracles,” may suffice as the basis for belief among the faithful. Religionists may see divine intervention as necessary to explain the
CONTACT Robert A. Michaels, PhD, CEP ram@ramtrac.com RAM TRAC Corporation, 3100 Rosendale Road, Schenectady, NY 12309. (cid:1) 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
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complexity of our universe, world, and life (see, for example, Polkinghorne 2009). Only divine intervention may seem adequate to explain such “miracles,” which are perceived to conflict with the familiar tendency of ordered states to decay to disorder, instead of vice versa, in accordance with religionists’ (often flawed) understanding of the Second Law of
Thermodynamics in physics. This perceived conflict has been used as a justification to insert creationism and its euphemisms “creation science” and “intelligent design” into school science curricula in the USA and in other countries. To scientists, complexity typically is understood as the product of a gradual process of evolution from simplicity. It features gradual information accumulation, consistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which predicts increasing disorder of orderly states, but only in thermodynamically isolated systems. That is, scientists generally believe that life, and its tendency to increase in complexity over time, is a form of order that evolves in open systems, such as on land, situated at an interface (surface) between
an energy source (the sun) and an energy sink (the earth). Likewise, hydrothermal vents are warm interfaces between an energy source (Earth’s hot molten core) and an energy sink (Earth’s cold oceans). In either environment, any increase in complexity results in a (more than) compensating increase in disorder (“entropy”) elsewhere, outside of the living systems. These opposing conceptions historically have placed science, especially astronomy, geology, and evolution, at odds with religion, and most acutely at odds with the Christian Doctrine of Separate Creation (“creationism”). In a free society, people are allowed to believe as they wish, in either way or in both ways (or in neither way). Conflicting beliefs about the origins of complexity and of life have suggested to some that science and reli-
gion are incompatible fundamentally (for example, Mahner and Bunge, 1996). Others, such as Ayala (2007), seek harmony. At the opposite extreme, Dawkins (2006) viewed the conflict as unresolvable, even to the point of repudiating meaningful dialog. Consistent with the “independence” classification of Barbour (1990), we view the realm of science as actually being distinct and non-overlapping with that of religion. Science encompasses all that may be addressed, in practice or in concept, via the scientific method, and religion potentially encompasses all else. This ideal separation of realms, endorsed by Gould (1997) as “nonoverlapping magisteria,” was unrecognized for most of human history. Indeed, for most of history science and religion did not clash because, for
most of human history, science did not exist. Religious explanation was the only game in town … and religion really “went to town.” The emergence of science in the past millennium showed that religion, in the absence of science, had claimed too much. Emerging scientific
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disciplines, especially astronomy, geology, and evolutionary biology, challenged religious beliefs about our world’s centrality in the heavens, its young age, and creation of life by a purposeful god, including creation of humans in his (or, nowadays, her) image. Much that religion claimed, and still may claim, turned out to be subject to scientific experimentation, and
therefore to potential refutation. The scientific method encompasses commonly understood controlled experiments, the less commonly understood null hypothesis in experimental design, and the still less commonly understood concept of the burden of proof, which is essentially selection of an appropriate null hypothesis as the default assumption that must be assumed to be true unless and until refuted via probative, controlled scientific experimentation. Superimposed upon this structure is the premise that experiments and results must be replicable. The burden of proof is especially difficult for non-scientists to understand because it shifts subtly, depending upon the weight of evidence evinced at the time of experimental design. This can be especially trouble-
some in legal proceedings, where court decisions must be made in real time, not whenever relevant science becomes incontrovertible (Michaels 2017). Non-scientists (and less commonly scientists) have doubted that Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution conceivably could be the subject of a priori scientific experimentation because evolution occurred in the past; it even might have ceased occurring long ago. This doubt is unjustified because it ignores multiple avenues of successful a priori experimentation in the realm of evolution theory. Microevolutionary processes often are demonstrated via experiments of short duration relative to science career durations and, more critically, relative to science grant funding durations. In such experi-
ments, changes in genotype and/or phenotype frequency are demonstrated in response to selective pressure applied to populations of a species, or even to mixed-species communities in nature or in laboratories. Demonstration of microevolutionary processes experimentally has enabled extrapolation toward understanding macroevolution. Most recently, for example, the question of speciation, which had dogged Darwin, has been clarified via microevolutionary experiments with Darwin’s finches, in just three generations producing reproductive isolation and speciation (Lamichhaney et al. 2018; Wagner 2018). Protestations of the inadequacy of evidence from experiments therefore have been deemed to be among the poorest arguments of creationists (Dawkins 2009).
More basic than experiments with microevolution is the impressive track record of prediction directly from the fossil record. Just as physicists have predicted from theory subatomic particles that ought to exist, and then found them, scientists have predicted features of the fossil record that
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ought to exist, and then found them. Well-known examples, sometimes colloquially termed “missing links,” include the African lungfish Protopterus marking the transition of multicellular animal life from water to land, and the flying dinosaur Pterodactyl marking the transition to early bird life, such as Archaeopteryx, which had feathers but still retained dinosaur-like
features such as heavy teeth and solid bones (rather than lighter beaks and hollow bones of modern birds). Just as subatomic particles predicted by physics were “found” experimentally even though they already had existed, the transitional fossils predicted by evolution theory were “found” in the fossil record, experimentally confirming a priori the past existence of the organisms whose fossils were newly discovered (or sometimes newly interpreted). Darwin, of course, famously applied fossil evidence in support of his deductions about evolution. Fossil evidence evinced by paleontologists continues to support the theory of evolution (Prothero 2007), and no scientific evidence, from fossils or other sources, has refuted it. Evolution has passed all scientific tests that could have refuted it.
A third avenue of successful research into evolution applies mainly to astronomy and its related field of cosmology. Powerful telescopes now can resolve objects at great distances. Such objects are visible today from light or radio waves emitted earlier in the history of the universe, almost as far back as the Big Bang some 15 billion years ago. Thus, objects actually can be seen today as they existed in the past, and can be compared with present-day objects such as relatively nearby stars and galaxies. Such comparisons of the building blocks of today’s universe at intervals encompassing almost its full history have revealed details and dynamics of its evolution. A most recent addition to this observational toolbox is gravity wave detectors. Most notably, the gravitational wave interferometers Ligo and Virgo
recently detected the gravitational signal of two merging neutron stars, confirming and enriching our understanding of such critical evolutionary events (Bloom and Sigurdsson 2017). Equally impressive, the interferometers were able to localize the neutrino star merger event in space, enabling detection of its counterpart radio and optical signals by what now is termed “multi-messenger astronomy.” The impressive strength of astronomical evidence of cosmic evolution has motivated acceptance even by theists who reject evidence of biological evolution (Scott 2009). The above and other avenues of research together illustrate that a hypothesis in evolution may set forth a priori an expectation, or a possibility, such as finding in the fossil (or astronomical) record some precursor to
that which exists presently. The follow-up experimental approach may consist of searching for probative fossil (or astronomical) evidence. Such evidence might be detected by astronomical or cosmological observation, or in the archived database of past astronomical observations. Fossils of past life
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might be unearthed via fieldwork in geological formations (in situ) and/or found in museums or other collections, which play a vital role in identifying new species (Kemp 2017). The presence or absence of probative evidence in the fossil or astronomical record, and subsequent investigation (if it was found), may confirm or refute the evolutionary hypothesis that is
being tested a priori, even though the objects (or events) that are being sought existed (or occurred) in the past. Another concept that often is unfamiliar to non-scientists is the status of a “theory” in science. A scientific theory is an area of knowledge and investigation, such as relativity theory in physics, graph theory in mathematics, or probability theory in statistics. Evolution theory rests on ground just as firm. Indeed, each of these “theories” rests on ground that is at least as firm as, for example, evidence used to convict criminals in our highly vaunted judicial system: beyond a shadow of a doubt. Evolution has progressed from a hypothesis to a theory and, indeed, currently to a fact (Gould 1981).
Knowledge in the area that a theory encompasses can be advanced via experimentation. Experimentation in a particular theory most commonly increases the richness of knowledge. That is, experimentation is not expected to topple a theory. Refutation sometimes has occurred, of course, such as in replacement (or more accurately extension) of Isaac Newton’s Theory of Motion in physics with Albert Einstein’s Theories of Special Relativity and of General Relatively. Such rare events sometimes are termed scientific “revolutions” (Kuhn 1962). Most essentially, the term “theory” does not, or should not, imply doubt about the science; it should imply incompleteness at most. By steps such as those described above, scientific theories and science
itself advance. In a free society, people may form their beliefs based upon the contemporary state of science, or they may reject science in favor of a preferred belief system. Rejection of science by those in positions of responsibility to apply it for the public good is especially objectionable, in part because of negative consequences that can result, and that have resulted. One example of science denial actually may have had beneficial consequences, though perhaps not for the deniers. In Germany after World War I, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was spurned as “Jewish science,” and was targeted, for example in 1919 by the anti-Semitic 1905 Physics Nobel Prize winner Philipp Lenard (Cornwell 2003, Rhodes 1986). With the rise of fas-
cism, Jewish physicists from Germany (including Einstein) lost their academic positions, and fled, with loss of nearly half of Germany’s theoretical physicists, including many Nobel Prize winners, and many of Germany’s top-ranked experts in quantum mechanics and nuclear physics (Cornwell
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2003, page 140). This exodus precluded a viable German atomic bomb project during WW-II. Nazi-threatened Jewish physicists from Germany and beyond, most notably from Hungary, flocked to the USA. Influenced by Albert Einstein’s famous letter, President Franklin Roosevelt instituted the Manhattan Project, securing for the USA a timely (but temporary) monop-
oly on atomic bomb (fission) technology and, later, hydrogen bomb (fusion) technology. The conflict between scientific and doctrinal thinking can mean life or death, as it did for millions of Russians in the 1940s when the uneducated, scientifically illiterate Trofim Lysenko was appointed Josef Stalin’s agriculture minister. Parallels exist today. Lysenko rejected Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics, which Russians under communism viewed as the scientific version of capitalism, which they termed “social Darwinism.” Instead, Lysenko embraced the discredited but politically correct Lamarckian belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Lysenko’s policies predictably failed to produce crops such as wheat resistant to harsh
Russian winters, instead producing widespread famine. Famine in Russia spread with Lysenko’s ideas to China, where they were adopted under Chairperson Mao. Scientific illiteracy and political correctness likewise both remain major societal threats today. Contemporary examples of doctrinal thinking include, today, rejection of not only evolution as in Lysenko’s agricultural policies of the 1940s, but also of climate change. For example, recent U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (U. S. EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt inappropriately applied to Agency policymaking his personal, nonexpert judgment that the contribution of our industrial society to global climate change is insignificant, notwithstanding the consensus view of U. S. and international climate experts that it
is both significant and primary (US GCRP 2017). This antiscientific view has led to announcement of U. S. plans to withdraw from the international Paris climate accord (which has not been ratified by Congress), notwithstanding the disproportionately large contribution of the USA to the overall impact of societies, especially of industrial societies, upon global climate. Global consequences of U. S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord will unfold with time. Many political and economic factors, however, may mitigate the impacts of this scientifically ignorant policy decision (Obama 2017), including state, city, and private sector plans to strive nonetheless to meet the goals explicated in the Paris Accord. Even if so, climate change impacts already include disastrous events. Indeed, recent years have evinced
a trend toward increasing frequency and intensity of storms (Matonse and Frei 2012), including extreme events such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Irene in 2011, and Sandy in 2012, all attaining extraordinary energy, largely from warmer ocean water in their path (Trenberth 2007). The most recent
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additions to this trend include, in just a single year (2017), major hurricanes impacting Texas (Harvey), Florida (Irma), and Puerto Rico (Maria). These three most recent events alone have caused widespread human tragedy and massive economic damage, in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars. The trend toward increasing climate impacts was recognized
early (though not uniformly) by the insurance industry, which has been disproportionately impacted by it (Mills 2005). Suspicion of science and scientists has existed since well before publication exactly 200 years ago of Mary Shelley’s celebrated tale Frankenstein (Shelley 1818), which is still influential (Cohen 2018). Denial of climate change science, and of science generally, has been attributed less to the science than to the implications of the science for personal identity. Fighting science denial with science evidence therefore has been judged futile with respect to many if not most science deniers (Hayhoe and Schwartz 2017). Indeed, the conflict between science and religion may be based more on underlying assumptions than on facts or theories (Ulanowicz 2004).
Overcoming anti-science thinking therefore may require overcoming ingrained cognitive biases (Kenrick, et al. 2018).
Religion masquerading as science: Creationism and the environmental, pharmaceutical, and pubic health professions
In the 1925 “monkey trial,” attorney and three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, the “silver-tongued orator,” prosecuted John T. Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee for violating that state’s Butler Act. Jennings, who also was a fundamentalist preacher, “created” a controversy that remains relevant to environmental, pharmaceutical, and public health professionals today. Most, however, seem (from their silence) unaware of, or unconcerned about, its relevance. Under the Butler Act:
… it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals. Defended pro bono by attorney Clarence Darrow (Stone 1941) under arrangement with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Scopes was fined (a then whopping) $100 for teaching evolution theory. Many Americans’ familiarity with these events was enhanced by Inherit the Wind, originally a
Broadway play in 1955 (Lawrence and Lee 1955), later a film in 1960, a television movie in 1965, again a Broadway play in 1998, and again a book in 2000. The tide against the teaching of evolution turned in 1968, when the U. S. Supreme Court, in Epperson vs. Arkansas, ruled that the religious purpose
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of state prohibitions against teaching evolution in public schools violates the U. S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause (Michaels 2005). In response, the terminology of creationism later “evolved” to “creation science” to qualify its subject matter for inclusion in science classrooms. Still later, it evolved further to “intelligent design” (ID) after no “creation scientist” succeeded at
demonstrating any scientific content of “creation science.” As of 2004, school districts in some 18 U. S. states faced challenges to science curricula that would mandate inclusion of intelligent design (Holden 2004). Resurgence of creationism in the USA now has surged beyond its borders (Silva 2017). Intelligent design acknowledges evolution, but claims that its results are so well suited to the needs of organisms, and so obviously nonrandom, that an intelligent force must guide such evolution. The implied intelligence is divine. Scientists and religious thinkers generally agree that the scientific method cannot refute religion, although it can test specific religious beliefs, such as whether the earth is just a few thousand years old or billions of years old, or whether it was created in just 7 days. Despite such scientific
refutations of specific religious beliefs, writes popular cosmology author Paul Davies, even today millions of people base their worldview on a religious interpretation of nature (Davies 2007, page 14). This population has been reported to include academics who accept the science of evolution, but who posit that its direction, leading to Man, is theistically guided (Shanks 2004). Should creationism (or its euphemisms) be included in public school science curricula as an alternative to evolution via natural selection (Darwinian evolution)? Proposals in favor of teaching creationism (or its euphemisms) have been made in countries including Brazil, South Korea, Turkey, and others (Silva 2017, Silva and Prado 2010, Silva and Mortimer
2014). What is the relevance, if any, to modern environmental, pharmaceutical, and public health professionals? If science cannot refute religion, then perhaps the history of Earth really could include implementation of a divine plan for evolution. Perhaps historians could corroborate this scientifically, as with carbon dating and other techniques. Should history curricula include such scientific endeavors, and should history classes teach science? We offer two responses. One is that each field has boundaries, so science curricula should exclude religion, and exploration of religious questions that are beyond the realm of science. This seems reasonable, just as history curricula exclude the teaching of science, except its history. Another response is that each field acknowledges contributions from other fields, so
science curricula should acknowledge contributions of religion and history to advancing science. Religion and history curricula likewise should acknowledge contributions of science to advancing knowledge. A difficulty in the particular case of creationism, however, is that it seems never to
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have contributed to science, especially to advancing science, notwithstanding its occasional underwriting of expeditions to find remnants of Noah’s Ark. To the contrary, it has been blamed for (or credited with!) retarding science, a difficulty described more fully, for example, by Silva and ~ Mortimer (2014) and Leao et al. (2016). Creationism is potentially devastating for environmental, pharmaceutical, and public health professionals, inasmuch as the fundamental premise of these fields is that humans are related to other species by descent and, as a result, related genetically and biochemically. Managing ecosystems, for example, means managing natural, agricultural, and artificial communities in accordance with sound principles of population and community ecology, all of which are guided by understanding micro- and macro-evolutionary processes as explicated by extensive scientific research. Creationism, however, removes humans from nature, even from the premise that adverse effects exerted by environmental pollutants in field studies and in laboratory bioassays can predict what might happen to “separately created” people exposed
to those same pollutants. In short, environmental regulation and protection as we know them in the USA and abroad rely upon the validity of Darwinian evolution as their most basic premise. The threat posed by creationism to environmental, pharmaceutical, and public health professionals may be mitigated partially by the fact that many creationists evidently recognize the importance of Darwinian evolution (Silva et al. 2015), perhaps because Darwinian evolution may be viewed as being theistically driven. The threat of creationism likewise applies to regulation of pharmaceuticals and of public health, for example as exemplified by the U. S. Food and Drug Administration’s criteria for demonstrating safety and efficacy of pharmaceuticals, in part based upon animal bioassays. Bioassays, under the
Doctrine of Separate Creation, are irrelevant to public health and its protection. Acceptance of creationism invalidates the premise of the unity of life, on which environmental, pharmaceutical, and public health protection depend for their validity. Environmental, pharmaceutical, and public health practitioners, therefore, all have an interest in resisting such religious threats to their respective fields of specialty. Creationists have sought to sweeten their religious fundamentalist premise in (at least) two ways. One way is to accept the course of evolution, and even its scientific basis, up to (but excluding) the point of agreeing on the sufficiency of natural selection to account for it. Yet, that is its Maginot Line, where it fails in its own defense, for it cannot argue objectively that the
design of sleek sharks is “intelligent” any more than an objector can counter that the design of awkward-looking penguins constitutes incompetent design. The second way by which creationists attempt to make their beliefs palatable in the public policy arena is to claim merely to be another idea in the
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arena in which all scientific ideas must compete. Creationism thereby strives to capture the middle ground of fair, open-minded consideration. To illustrate, an article in Science, under the headline Dr. Frist Prescribes ID, quoted (now former) Senate majority leader Bill Frist, MD, of Tennessee (the Scopes state), as saying, I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a
broad range of fact … including faith … [teaching evolution and Intelligent Design] doesn’t force any particular theory on anyone (Holden 2005). Perhaps few would deny such a seemingly innocuous appeal to fairness and inclusiveness. Yet, upon scrutiny, troubling issues are raised. Frist accepted the fact of religious faith, but appears also to have accepted it as a basis for scientific fact. Frist likewise accepted the need for students to have access to a broad range of information, but appears to have accepted the science classroom as a place appropriate for teaching religion. What, indeed, would be taught? It would appear to be that, under creationism, the guiding force of evolution, until identified by the scientific method,
must be divine as a default assumption, true until refuted scientifically … but, as indicated earlier, such refutation lies beyond science. Pennock (2001 and 2003) therefore has warned that scientists must be ready to defend good evolution education (Pennock 2003, page 143). We agree: generally speaking, good science policy must be based upon good science. A contemporary example of religion masquerading as science is controversial. It involves the new Museum of the Bible, which opened on 17 November 2017 in Washington, DC (Zoll 2017). Its original mission statement was To inspire confidence in the absolute authority of the Bible (Wade 2017). Many of its artifacts are of questionable provenance, but the
museum hired a respected scholar to apply the highest standards to its future acquisitions. The museum’s original religious mission statement was revised, apparently likewise to win scholarly respect, as follows: To invite all people to engage with the history, narrative, and impact of the Bible. Concern has been expressed, however, that the museum will use artifacts to further an evangelical view of the Bible as historically accurate and immutable (Wade 2017). Similarly, the Discovery Institute, based in Seattle, Washington, seeks to unify the various factions comprising the creationist movement toward undermining the Theory of Evolution by promoting the “scientific” idea that it is controversial and in crisis (Pennock 2003).
Science masquerading as religion
A god that could be real Beliefs that can be refuted via application of the scientific method generally do not qualify as religious, at least from a scientific perspective. Scientology, for example, is based upon the creation myth (Shermer 2011):
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Around 75 million years ago Xenu, the ruler of a Galactic Confederation of 76 planets, transported billions of his charges in spaceships similar to DC-8 jets to a planet called Teegeeack (Earth). There they were placed near volcanoes and killed by exploding hydrogen bombs, after which their ‘thetans’ (souls) remained to inhabit the bodies of future earthlings, causing humans today great spiritual
harm and unhappiness that can be remedied through special techniques involving an Electropsychometer (Emeter) in a process called auditing. The origin of the Scientology creation myth evidently (Shermer 2011) was a meeting in New York City of the Hydra Club, a science fiction writers’ group, at which Lester del Rey suggested that sci-fi writers should create a religion because it will be tax-free, after which L. Ron Hubbard wrote his popular (and profitable) Dianetics book, published in 1950. The myth and the circumstances of its creation are subject to scientific refutation, in part because they violate the principle of parsimony (“Occam’s razor”; the simplest explanation is the preferred explanation). Like all scientific “facts”, however, the Scientology creation myth and the circumstances of its creation can be explained via appeal
to religion, possibly (for example) via the ad hoc claim that the idea for Scientology was induced by an actual all-powerful being (god). Exceptions exist, however. For example, a doomsday cult that predicts the end of the earth, or of the universe, on a particular date nonetheless may qualify as being religious, even though the belief is scientifically refutable. That is, the earth or universe might continue to exist after the predicted date of apocalypse. The cult, in that case, could address this scientific refutation in at least two ways. For broad appeal, the cult might make a limited admission of error, specifically in the timing of doomsday. For a narrower appeal, to its adherents, the cult might make the ad hoc claim that the earth or the universe actually did cease to exist, but then
was reborn in its pre-apocalypse form. Such refutation likewise would violate the principle of parsimony, and therefore would not impress scientists. A related problem arises if a religion itself, or an adherent, embraces scientific standards of confirmation or refutation. Such a case was reported recently (Wade 2018), involving attorney Thomas Stuart Ferguson, a Mormon who believed that the Book of Mormon predicted the presence in Mesoamerica of Old World plants, animals, metals, and of Hebrew and/or Egyptian scripts among writings on Mesoamerican stone tablets. Ferguson’s commitment to the scientific method ultimately placed him “at its mercy.” In a paper on the geography of the Book of Mormon, Ferguson (1975) he reported failure of archeologists to find such evidence in Mesoamerica. In a
1976 letter, he concluded: The real implication of the [1975] paper is that you can’t set Book of Mormon geography down anywhere—because it is fictional. A current example of the scientific refutation problem is illustrated by Nancy Ellen Abrams (2015), who was an atheist attending a self-help group
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whose members were instructed to seek divine strength to help overcome their eating disorders. Disbelieving in any traditional god, she invented a unitary planetary god. Her god was formulated, consistent with her own beliefs, to be compatible in all ways with science. Her personal success motivated extrapolation of her god to serve all humanity, and to supplant
traditional religions and gods. Abrams’ defined her scientific god as the “emergence” of complex systems, exhibiting complex behavior, from the actions and interactions of their myriad simpler components (Abrams 2015, Michaels 2015). A single particle, for example, lacks a temperature, but temperature “emerges” from interactions (collisions) of many particles confined to a vessel. A market emerges from myriad individual transactions. An economy, such as the U. S. or world economy, emerges from its component markets. System behavior, though complex and difficult to predict, nonetheless follows the laws of economics. Temperature, markets, and economies all are real and, ultimately, emergence is real … but it therefore is science, and therefore it is not religion.
Abrams also suggested, correctly, that we who live are immortal, in the limited scientific sense that we evolved from atoms produced in past (hellish) supernovae, from past forms of life, and from ancestral species. She suggested further that, after we die individually, we will continue to live in the corporate sense of being embodied in our descendants, for as long as descendants of our ancestors persist in the universe. These scientific statements, though true to the best of our knowledge, are subject to refutation, and therefore likewise fail to qualify as religious. Abrams promoted her planetary god based upon her belief that such a god is needed urgently to save Earth from overpopulation and over-exploitation of resources. This genuine need for urgent global action, however,
seems incompatible with the longer (perhaps infinite) timeframe likely to be needed for traditionally religious people to switch to religious belief in the science of “emergence.” A more realistic and therefore more hopeful pathway for mobilizing religious people in time to save Earth would rely upon traditional, already-existing religions. Indeed, “religious environmentalism” has been emerging as a massive and growing movement within multiple religions to promote stewardship of Earth’s ecosystems (Fadini and Fernandes 2017, Gottlieb 2006). The religious underpinning of this movement may originate from the Garden of Eden myth, in which God’s crowning and final creation was Man. To man and woman, therefore, He left the work of tending to His previous crea-
tions. Thus, the Bible augurs the role of humans as the responsible, perpetual stewards of God’s creations. In Judaism, for example, the principle of tikun olam, rectifying the world, already motivates planet-saving efforts (Seifman 2016). Similarly, on June
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18, 2015, Pope Francis released a remarkable encyclical (Pope 2015) placing his religious imprimatur on the urgent need for global action to combat climate change, resource over-exploitation, and related global stresses. Thus, traditional religions may work at least as well as Abrams’ proposed scientific religion to accomplish her laudable goal.
The long, if not infinite, timeframe implied by Abrams’ proposal thus constitutes another fundamental flaw. Further, Abrams’ god is a “"that,” not a “who,” which would disappoint adherents to traditional religions. Most essentially, Abrams “scientific religion” eschews scientific reductionism, instead seeking to worship the complex, difficult-to-predict manifestations of nature that emerge from its myriad simpler components. Scientists who are not religious may be comfortable with spiritual rather than religious contemplation and appreciation of nature. They are unlikely to call nature “god,” however, nor its contemplation and appreciation “worship,” even though that seems to be a trend in some religions, such as Judaism.
Abrams goes further, elevating nature to an emergent scientific entity that she does indeed call “God,” though stripped of many qualities that most believers would demand of their god. Abrams’ approach, like science itself, seems ultimately defensible, but of little practical benefit relative to the urgency of the problem that she seeks to address. The trend of religions to embrace green goals as part of their stewardship of nature raises the issue of whether religious environmentalists are environmentalists first or religionists first. Seifman (2016), for example, describes “green Jews,” with the subtitle it started with Creation. Science explains our existence via evolution over many millions of years of natural selection, not via relatively
recent divine creation such as in the Doctrine of Separate Creation. Religious thinking currently may parallel scientific thinking, but their tracks may diverge, challenging religious environmentalists to commit to a primary path. When the tracks diverge, good science policy must be based upon good science, not upon good religious doctrine. Being “green,” as religion seems to require, also may demand population control, contravening the religious (Old Testament, Genesis) doctrine to go forth and multiply. Each religionist therefore must reconcile such conflicts. (For example, how much “multiplying” must go on in each family remains a religious question for each adherent.). The conflict may be most severe for fundamentalists,
including Jews and Christians who reject evolution theory.
Harmony of science and religion
Much has been written about the conflict between science and religion and their reconciliation (Michaels and Hammerman 2015, Harris 2005). Perhaps most famously, in his acclaimed book The God Delusion, British
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biologist Richard Dawkins (2006) used science and logic in an effort to demolish religion. He argued, for example, that competing religions make conflicting, mutually incompatible claims, so some must be incorrect. Similarly, however, some spectacular scientific claims have been refuted, such as claimed discovery of “cold fusion” in 1989. Such gaffs have not
refuted science. Further, religionists might view scientists as unconstrained by logic. Scientists’ quantum mechanics, for example, may seem to make no sense: photons follow apparently impossible paths, and particles illogically exert “non-local” actions at a distance – yet these apparent absurdities somehow do not undermine scientists’ belief in science. Scientists might reject religion based upon history. Many so-called divine revelations were found to be falsifiable, and were falsified, thereby undermining the credibility of pre-scientific religious tenets and, by extension, the credibility of current religionists’ claims. Scientific proponents of such challenges received punitive treatment for their heresy. Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was burned at the stake for his heretical astronomical beliefs.
Likewise, Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was placed under house arrest, and threatened with worse. Pope John Paul in 1992 apologized to descendants of Galileo, and generally to scientists and philosophers who died at the hands of the Inquisition, though today this might seem too little, centuries too late. Still, we wonder how scientists might have treated upstart religionists, had science predated religion on the world stage. Indeed, history is replete with cruelty, not only in the name of religion, but also in the name of science (and engineering), such as in construction of gas chambers and nuclear bombs. Attempts have been made to reconcile science and religion literally, for example, by interpreting 6 “days” of creation as some longer period of
time, or by invoking the relativistic time dilation of Einstein to equate eons of geological and biological evolution with six literal Earth days. The mathematical physicist Frank Tipler, in his treatise The Physics of Immortality (Tipler 1995), argued scientifically for the literal accuracy of the religious belief that the universe will reach an “Omega Point,” with divine unification including resurrection of the dead. His highly mathematical treatment of this phenomenon (in large part) was based upon the premise that, in an infinite universe, anything that can happen eventually will happen. In the fullness of time, all possible arrangements of matter will recur, and all realities including today’s will recur, indeed infinitely many times. John Polkinghorne (1998) took a holistic approach to this problem in his
book Belief in God in an Age of Science. Polkinghorne is a physicist and Christian theologian, the only member of the British Royal Society exhibiting such “duality.” While eloquent and creative, his effort was disappointing, especially regarding his attempt to defend, in light of scientific
ENVIRONMENTAL CLAIMS JOURNAL 15
knowledge, belief in a personal god who prescribes ethics and judges behavior, with (possibly nasty) consequences for transgressors (in some religions) in an afterlife. Whereas creationists might view Darwinian evolution as a divine creation, Ayala (2007) suggested in contrast that evolution might be viewed rather as a gift to religion, deflecting from god responsi-
bility for imperfections in the human condition, such as the ungodly existence of evil and suffering. Perhaps the most promising approach to reconciling science and religion has been exploitation of the “green” movement in both. Just as environmental science has emerged as a (relatively) new specialty area, “green” religion has evolved from science-denying religion (see, for example, Gottlieb 2006). This confluence of interests, we think, can and should be expanded using existing models, for example formation of new partnerships between scientific and religious institutions where stakeholders may be affected by potentially impactful environmental projects (Wells and McShane 2004). Indeed, traditional ecological knowledge is a critical global resource that
has been correlated with religious affiliation (McCarter and Gavin 2014). Further, the rise and fall of religions have been related to environmental stress, such as drought, and the strategies of religious communities for managing such stresses (Costanza et al. 2007). Thus, religious beliefs and religious institutions, such as congregations, can be deployed toward “green” technology transfer. Technology transfer promotes technology change. Technologies generally require a sponsor to promote them, without which the transfer and adoption of technologies, such as “green” technologies, are unlikely to succeed (see, for example, Michaels 2002). Beyond the scientific reconciliation of religion with science, religion is more than a collection of beliefs. Like science, religion seeks to explain the
darkness around us. Beyond science, religion seeks also to replace despair with hope, give a sense of history, and promise of a new tomorrow to those who see only a dismal present and perhaps desperate challenges, and to give strength through acknowledging forces beyond our ken, steeled by a community that helps them to heal, to cope, and to hope. Those who see a conflict between scientific and religious belief systems may misunderstand what science can accomplish, religion can prove, and observers can appreciate. Ultimately, science and religion share critically important strengths (or weaknesses): the moral fiber and the imaginativeness of their practitioners. Modern religious institutions have been deployed toward accomplishing
great good, through the power of their congregations. Depending upon one’s beliefs, prayer might seem essential for doing good, or a distraction. The realms of science and religion should be defined consistent with Gould (1997) as “non-overlapping magisteria,” and with Barbour (1990) as
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“independent” belief systems that, even if independent, relate to and with one another. Toleration at least, and preferably appreciation, should characterize the relationship between science and religion, and between scientists and religionists. In short, science and religion should interact much as science interacts with music and with art: constructively.
Discussion: from conflict to harmony and potentially Planet-saving synergy Science and religion can coexist harmoniously as long as science restricts itself to issues that can be decided via the scientific method, and religion to
issues that cannot. According to Davies, modern scientists are mostly not religious (Davies 2007, page 4). For religion, that problem is just the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of people are not scientists, but many nonetheless are scientifically literate. They may have felt compelled to choose between incompatible or even patently false scientific and religious tenets. Reconciling such conflict is important to both science and religion as they co-evolve. Here we explore a few ways that science and religion have challenged one another, and reconciled, to mutual long-term benefit. Much of this
activity has occurred, and still occurs, in the realm of philosophy, which is based upon logical reasoning from a set of defined religious and/or scientific premises. It constitutes our best example of the valid merging of scientific and religious thinking. Religion focuses on how to bring “godly,” ways into the world, whereas science focuses on how best to understand the world. Both seek, hopefully, to improve the world, but both have fallen short on multiple tragic occasions, such as by contributing to enabling the Holocaust of World War II. Both also seek meaning: Modern scientists, writes Davies (2007), accept that
an intelligible script underlies the workings of nature, for to believe otherwise would undermine the very motivation for doing research, which is to uncover something meaningful about the world that we don’t already know (Davies 2007, page 4). In contrast, the Nobel Prize winning cosmologist Steven Weinberg wrote The more the universe seems comprehensible the more it also seems pointless (Weinberg 1977, page 149). To religious people, the point of the divine creator was the “intelligent design” of a habitable universe for humans. In contrast, Davies suggests instead that our universe might be a long process
of trial and error by an incompetent creator (Davies 2007, page 82), one of innumerable “pocket universes” emerging from innumerable “big bangs” exhibiting variations on the laws of physics. The “anthropic principle”
ENVIRONMENTAL CLAIMS JOURNAL 17
dictates that we must live in a habitable pocket universe, however rare it may be, or we would neither exist nor ponder this issue. Religious scientists are numerous, and may combine the best features of two universes. The religious physicist and cosmologist Jacob Bekenstein (1947–2015) said in an interview with the Israeli online newspaper Haaretz.com (Shtull-Trauring 2012), Religious scientists calculate like every-
one else, and lecture like everyone else, but science affects his personal life: I look at the world as a product of God … my job as a scientist is to figure out how it works. Physics so far has not falsified god, and in principle it can never do so. Religious people who are not scientists may misunderstand the role of science in constraining religion. An important example is inferring what, if anything, physics has to say about the quandary of why a benevolent god, such as the one most Jews believe in, allows bad things to happen to good people (and vice versa). This was the subject of a 1978 book by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner (1978) who, perhaps wisely, sought no help from phys-
ics to address it. In his answer, Rabbi Kushner acknowledged limits on God’s power, positing instead a god whose essence is constrained, and who refrains from interfering with the “natural order.” Such considerations have revealed the need to reconcile the intrinsic conflict between religious views of divine benevolence with violence that evidently is inherent in evolutionary natural selection (Burns 2006). The quandary became especially poignant for Jews following the Holocaust of World War II, in which fully a third of our Planet’s Jews were murdered. Similarly, it affects the fundamental beliefs of people of many religions following episodes of genocide, oppression, or personal anguish. The grim reality that is faced by unfortunate individuals and by
oppressed peoples contradicts, and may seem to belie, religious doctrines that blithely profess divine benevolence. They understandably are disappointed in the god they imagine and worship. These questions of fundamental faith have spawned many atheists and agnostics, and challenged clerics to lead absent congregants and questioning congregations. Toward solving this quandary, British Masorti (Conservative) Rabbi Jeremy Gordon questionably enlisted physics in a 2008 article that was republished in his collected works, Spiritual Vagabondry (Gordon 2015). Specifically, Rabbi Gordon drew a lesson from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of quantum mechanics, in which the ability of classical Newtonian physics to predict future motions of big objects such as planets
and baseballs breaks down in the realm of atomic and subatomic particles. That is, modern physics tells us that the future is not strictly deterministic; it is probabilistic. Einstein evidently erred when he wrote God does not play dice.
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Rabbi Gordon inferred incorrectly that individual people are like individual atoms, whose fates cannot be predicted with certainty. If they live a moral life they are likely, but not guaranteed, to be rewarded by god. This reasoning by analogy is creative but false. Physically, people are more like baseballs than like atoms. However uncertain their future may be, the
source of the uncertainty is rarely, if ever, the inability of physics to predict with certainty the motions of atoms and subatomic particles in our quantum mechanical universe. Uncertainty is inevitable, even if it does not arise from quantum uncertainty, in part as a result of “chaotic” (essentially divergent, impossible-to-predict) motions of large objects including billiard balls, baseballs, and people. History illuminates the past, whereas many aspects of the future nonetheless may be unknowable, even in principle. One still might postulate that an almighty god, for reasons unfathomable to mere mortals, does indeed treat individual people like atoms rather than like baseballs. Can we excuse such a god who frequently deviates from “divine benevolence?” Our answer is: no more than we can excuse a legal
system that frequently deviates from justice by condemning innocent people to death, or incarcerates people who are innocent. Our highly vaunted legal system ideally convicts people beyond a shadow of a doubt. When doubt exists, defendants should be acquitted. When our legal system fails to meet this high standard, we criticize it; we do not excuse it. Can we say that victims of cancer, Ebola, murder, rape, genocide, or other misfortunes deserved these fates beyond a shadow of doubt for their sins? Can we say that victims of Noah’s legendary Flood, such as all except two elephants, all except two camels, and all except two pandas, deserved to drown because of their sins or, worse, ours? As Bekenstein said, I feel much more comfortable in the world because I
understand how simple things work … I get a sense of security that not everything is random, and that I can actually understand and not be surprised by things (Shtull-Trauring 2012). That is to say, do not look to quantum mechanics to restore your faith. That must remain in religion’s realm, not science’s. Harmony between science and religion might be modeled after the vision of Albert Einstein. Speaking at a conference on science and religion, Einstein described a religiously enlightened person as one who has … liberated himself from … his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations [that have] super-personal value. We suggest that a scientifically enlightened person likewise might be preoccupied with matters
that have super-personal value. Our universe has room for diverse belief systems, from religion to science to atheism; it even has room for error. In our universe, science can be enriched by religion, and religion by science. Science should bring light to the dark recesses of the universe, and
ENVIRONMENTAL CLAIMS JOURNAL 19
enlighten us as to where we have come from, and to where we might be headed. Religion should enlighten our dark paths, and give us hope despite our failings. As an ideal, science should complement religion, and religion should complement science.
Conclusions Nature has inspired awe throughout history. Scientific contemplation of nature, without god, and theological contemplation of nature, with god,
share in common the spiritual appreciation of nature. This convergence has emerged from a history of scientific study often conflicting with theological belief. Conflict has been manifest as promotion of creationism and its euphemisms in school curricula, and as science denial, most recently in the U.S. Government. Toward saving our planet, however, a scientific “religion” was proposed, promoting belief in “a god that could be real,” embodied as the science of “emergence” of complex, godlike system behaviors from interactions of myriad system components. We suggest that this approach neither qualifies as religious nor promises to be effective. We propose that a more effective approach will be to enhance coordination of the existing “green” religion
movement with the “green” technology movement, to exploit potentially planet-saving synergies. Such coordination can take the form of new partnership arrangements between scientific and religious institutions involving stakeholders affected by potentially impactful environmental projects. Unification, therefore, is an emerging reality for the science/religion relationship, driven by convergent evolution of each toward saving our shared planet from ourselves. No longer can religion deny science, nor science overlook the power of religious institutions toward achieving our common existential goal. The science/religion relationship, often portrayed as static, has proved dynamic, with emerging green science and green religion cooperating toward creating potentially planet-saving synergies.
About the authors
Dr. Robert Michaels, PhD, CEP (ram@ramtrac.com) is President of RAM TRAC Corporation (Schenectady, New York), and a toxicologist specializing in assessment and management of risks to public health potentially posed by environmental contaminants. He has served numerous corporate clients, the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and public interest organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Dr. Michaels chaired the State of Maine Scientific Advisory Panel, and for 20 years chaired the Certification Review Board of the Academy of Board Certified Environmental Professionals (ABCEP). He has been Secretary of the NFPA Committee on Classification and Properties of Hazardous Chemicals, Board Member of the National Association of Environmental Professionals, and Member of the Editorial Advisory Boards
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of Springer-Verlag and Cambridge University Press journals. He earned his doctorate at SUNY at Stony Brook in 1979, and in 2004 was awarded ABCEP’s Kramer Medal recognizing his professional contributions. Rabbi Richard A. Hammerman, DHL (rahammermn@aol.com). Rabbi Hammerman studied in New York City and Israel, and his subsequent professional activities have brought him to many other countries. He is a graduate of the Joint Program of Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary where he also received a Master’s Degree, rabbinic ordination, and an honorary Doctoral Degree. In 2006, he was elected Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation B’nai Israel in Toms River, New Jersey, after serving as its rabbi, community leader and social activist for over 31 years. He currently teaches adult education courses in Bible, and has helped edit articles in Bible and psychoanalysis. Prof. Hessley Machado Silva, PhD (heslley@uniformg.edu.br), Post-Doctoral in Education and Science at the University of Minho, Portugal. PhD in Education at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (2015), Brazil; Master’s degree in Education from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (2000). Graduate in Biology and Science, University Center of Formiga. Specialization in Biotechnology from the Federal University of Lavras, and specialization in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the Federal University of Ouro Preto. Adjunct professor II, University Center of Formiga/MG. Coordinator of two groups of investigation in Education and Health, University Center of Formiga/MG. Co-editor, journal Conex~ao Ci^encia. References
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Publication citation
Michaels, RA; Richard A. Hammerman, and Heslley Machado Silva. Emerging green synergy in the science/religion relationship: from conflict to potentially planet-saving cooperation. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, Environmental Claims Journal, 30(4):314-36, doi 10.1080/10406026.2018.1504381, 23 pages, published online 3 October 2018;