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Stories about faith are sometimes like the stories told by children. You have to hear the full story if you want to get the real story. For a long time, I thought the story of Galileo Galilei was a story about the clash between religion and science. As the story usually goes, the father of modern science was persecuted by the Inquisition of the Catholic Church for the heresy of declaring that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the other way around. Most of the world believed that the earth was the center of the universe, and it was argued that the Bible agreed. After all, Psalm 96 says the foundations of the earth are “immovable.” To pay the price for his radical assertions, Galileo was forced to recant his views and spend the rest of his life under house arrest. It’s a fairly simple story, and the facts are all true, but if we want to know the real story we have to hear the full story.
The full story tells a different kind of tale. To begin with, Galileo was a Catholic and remained a Catholic. He even defended himself by arguing for alternative interpretations of the Bible. For him, the scriptures used to support the idea that the earth was the immovable center around which other planets moved were simply written in the common, coarse language of their time and should not be taken to reflect knowledge of how the universe operates. Galileo’s conflict with the Catholic Church ultimately wasn’t about the legitimacy of either science or religion but rather the legitimacy of particular views of scripture. The full story of Galileo would also include what happened before he was interrogated and sentenced. In the Catholic hierarchy, Galileo and his ideas about the sun were actually hospitably received at first. This was partially due to Galileo’s close ties with one of the pope’s attendants. It wasn’t until the attendant fell from grace that Galileo became open to attack. What made matters worse was that this attack came at a time when the hierarchy was clamping down on challenges to established interpretations. Catholics and Protestants were in the midst of a devastating and destructive war against each other. We know it as the Thirty Years’ War, and one of the main bones of contention was the issue of the new biblical interpretations proposed by Protestants. The Catholic hierarchy couldn’t look like its views were open to scrutiny. Instead of regarding the story of Galileo as a story about religion and science clashing, it is really a story about Christians clashing with each other in more than one way. Perhaps more importantly, it’s a story about a Christian who courageously embraced the discoveries of science despite the clash. Under house arrest and with a ban on publishing books, Galileo still managed to sneak a book he authored into the Netherlands so it could be published. The book anticipated Newton’s laws of motion and became one of the most significant contributions to science of all time.
Galileo’s experience as a scientist thumbing his nose at authorities isn’t unique. The famous physicist Freeman Dyson once wrote a book called “The Scientist as Rebel” in which he observed how scientists in just about every culture, country, and religion have played a rebellious role. They’ve been free spirits dedicated to the pursuit of truth come what may, and the truth often flies in the face of orthodoxy and its restraints. Of course, scientists are not always rebellious. They can also be the handmaidens of power. They can design bombs, and they can promote myths of racial inferiority. Still, I think Dyson’s observations are good ones, and they helped me to think about why a religious person would want to embrace science. If one thinks of religion and science as two different ways to pursue truth, then why not work together. When I think of scientists like Galileo and Darwin, I feel like they are doing religious folk a favor. They’re helping us clean out our intellectual closets. To me an outdated view of the world is like a green zoot suit from the 40s. It’s the kind of thing you would be embarrassed to wear in public today. I want a scientist who will take one look at that and say, “No, no, no, no. Uh-hu. You need to try on something a little more modern.” Of course, not everyone who calls him or herself a “scientist” has a clean closet either. I have seen a few astrologists wearing some funky outfits. Still, I think science at its best can do a lot to help religion.
In reading Dyson’s essay, a couple of other thoughts struck me. Dyson says that “what is true of science is also true of poetry.” He was talking about how science and poetry are universal to all peoples and cultures, but it occurred to me that science and poetry are also alike in other ways. Perhaps, the more fitting comparison is actually between scientific method and poetry. I would say that scientific method is to science what poetry is to religion. Scientific method and poetry are each a means to pursue truth. They each help to illuminate the world around us. With scientific method, we observe and experiment as a means to illuminate our physical world. With poetry, we focus our attention and express our deepest sentiments as a means to illuminate our spiritual world.
Scientific method and poetry are both vital and indispensable to human wellbeing in their own ways. The danger is when biblical literalists or scientific atheists confuse poetry for science or scientific claims. When I read our scripture for this morning, I don’t believe for one second that the Psalmist actually observed the fingers of God setting the moon and the stars into place. It’s not a scientific claim. Instead, it’s the poetic utterance of someone who looked up at the night sky and said, “Wow, I am in awe of how vast, magnificent, and beautifully arranged this universe is.” A scientist might be able to tell us the distance to the stars, but only a poet can then say, “Who are we that the God of this huge universe would even care about us?” The psalmist is wrestling with some deep theological issues that bring us face to face with questions about the meaning and mystery of life. The psalmist goes on to wrestle with what could possibly be the significance of human life in this context, and essentially what the psalmist says is this: In the midst of this vast creation, our job is to care for that which is near to us. Our job is to care for the sheep and oxen, yes, even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea. There are probably a lot of environmentalists who love science and probably wouldn’t mind a job description that says “care for that which is near to you.” It’s not a bad outlook to have, and it’s not an outlook that science can prescribe. Science can help us to understand the natural world around us, but science can’t say we should care for it. Science can tell us how the physical world operates, but it can’t tell us how all of that is significant and meaningful for our lives.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t need science. We need science to make sure that skylight stays in place. We need science to disabuse us of our foolishness when we think the heavens lie just above the clouds. More than that, science can also open up to us new worlds of wonder and awe. In the poetry we read earlier, that’s what Gillian Ferguson realized about the cracking of the human DNA codes. The awe provoked by that single, scientific endeavor is enough to inspire a thousand poems. Religious folk have lots of good reasons to embrace science.
Once we realize this, I think the important question is how do we create the environment for religion and science to work together. I think part of the answer has to do with a recognition of mystery and the kind of intellectual humility that instills. One of my favorite images for envisioning this comes from an astronomer named Robert Jastrow. The theologian Alister McGrath summarizes Jastrow’s observations about “the scientific search for the origins of the universe” as follows. He says that “modern science finds itself asking precisely the same questions as those posed in earlier generations by religious thinkers. It is not a matter of another year, another decade of work, another measurement, or another theory; at this moment, it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peaks; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
This story of the climbing scientist coming late to the party isn’t flattering for science, but I don’t think it’s the full story. I like to imagine a group of scientists and theologians sitting around a campfire at the top of that mountain. Each of them has their head tilted back, and they are gazing up at the stars. The scientists are busy explaining to the theologians how the stars came into existence and how they are composed of different elements. Eventually, however, the explanations and theories come to an end, and one of the scientists says, “But, in the end, we know very little about the universe.” To which one of the theologians replies, “That may be true, but we certainly know a lot more than we did before you arrived.” That night both the scientists and the theologians slept easier underneath the stars warmed by each other’s company. May it be so for all of us. Amen.