Behind Science

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Science and religion have been sparring partners for a few centuries now, and I believe this is a generational conflict.  The child, science, arguing with the parent, religion.  You see, religion is all about worldview.  As secular as secular scientists declare themselves to be, their worldview was likely formed by their religious heritage.  Religion can’t be teased out of culture.  Here in the western world modern science was born in a fully Christianized cultural landscape.  That’s not to say that Judaism and Islam didn’t contribute, but European culture was based on some basic Christian ideals.  Creatio ex nihilo, for one—creation out of nothing.  Another aspect is that Occam’s razor accounts for the world we see.  This was a philosophical concept born of the Christian worldview.  And the list could go on and on.

Scientists, focusing on their specializations, generally don’t sit back to think about the origins of their basic cultural presuppositions.  Many of them came directly from their religion.  Ever since college I’ve tended to think back to presuppositions, and question them.  How do we know we know?  Epistemology is as useful as it is disturbing.  And if we discover that the basis for what we know was locked into a worldview we can no longer accept, what does that say about the underpinning method?  Our science is based on the idea that the world is rational because a benevolent deity wouldn’t make it absurd.  Would he?  And why are we still referring to the deity as a male?  Indeed, we still think of him as a human.

It’s difficult to get beyond our basic cultural propositions.  Religions such a Buddhism promote the idea that change is the only constant, yet the science in countries of the east is borrowed from the concepts of the west and its monotheistic sub-structure.  We tend to think that if humans can’t sense it, and quantify it, it doesn’t exist.  So it is that many scientists become atheists, but without perhaps questioning the cultural presuppositions that have led to the scientific outlook in the first place.  Some will go as far as saying philosophy is a waste of time when philosophy is the framework of all rational thinking.  And that’s not to forget that there’s emotional thinking as well.  The big picture is complicated by philosophers writing in lingo that the rest of us can’t understand.  And even they have presuppositions.  Maybe it’s time for me to go back to school and examine them again.

How Flat is Your World?

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I talk so much about lenses in class that some of my students must think I’m a closet optometrist. The lenses I refer to, however, are those that we all wear as part of our culture. We can’t help it – being born into a worldview is part of the human experience. From my youngest days I recall learning that the earth is twirling around at a dizzying rate and we are hurtling through space around the sun so fast that my thoughts can’t even keep up. These are lenses. Then we turn to the Bible (or other ancient texts for that matter) and read about the creation of their world. To understand their worldview we need to take our lenses off.

Last night I could see the understanding dawning on some faces in the classroom as I described ancient Israel’s worldview. They were flat-earthers, each and every one. The world that is described in Genesis 1 is flat with an invisible dome over it, a dome that holds back the cosmic waters and provides a living space for the sun, moon, and stars. The flat earth is upheld by pillars that erupt through the surface in the form of mountains, and there is water around all. Genesis 1 does not describe the creation of water; it is already there. You can tell there is water above the dome because it falls on us whenever it rains. Oh yes, and dead people are in Sheol, somewhere under our feet. This is the world that God creates in six days. It is not our world. It was their world.

One possible rendition of an extinct worldview

It is not that the physical world has changed, but perceptions of it have. When I stand outside (this was especially noticeable when I lived in central Illinois), I see the world is flat. I feel no motion – I get sick as a dog swinging my head around too fast, so I would know! The difference is that I understand apparent reality is not the same as physical reality. The writers of Genesis 1 did not anticipate our world, nor did they describe how it came to be. They described the world they knew, a world that does not actually exist. Fundamentalists today claim that the Bible is factual in its description of the creation, and that may be the case. But only if you take your lenses off and admit that the world God created is flat and is covered by a dome. And by the way, it looks like the windows of the sky were left open because it is beginning to snow again.