Science and religion seem unalterably opposed in many minds: you either believe in science or you believe in religion–you can’t do both. If you accept science you have to deny faith.
And there is, for some, a bit of reality in that: if you accept evolution it is rather difficult to accept the Biblical story of creation as literal truth. The two do seem mutually exclusive at that level.
Today one of my news feeds ran a blog on science and the meaning of life. It made reference to a story 60 Minutes did a few years ago about Tom Brady, the New England Patriot quarterback, in which he says–after four Superbowls and three wins–“There has to be more than this.”
The writer provides a link to a snippet of the interview, which I dutifully followed. On that page there were a number of other links to more extended clips of that same interview–one of which was a religious site. I was curious about how they would use it, so I followed it as well. There was nothing surprising–and nothing really out there–about how the producer handled the clip.
What amazed me was the stupidity of the comments people had written underneath. Here is a guy trying to figure it out–to really figure it out for himself–and the comments range from “He is so dumb that he can’t see God is the answer” to “He just needs that fourth ring.” The smugness on the one end to the pure materialism at the other were deeply disturbing.
Neither Jane nor I were ever particularly religious. She pursued science for most of her life not as a faith or a religion but because it offered a way of figuring out how the world and the universe actually worked. I was raised in a household where the nightly dinner conversations revolved around engineering and science as often as not. My papers and opinions owe much to my training in the scientific method.
We both subscribed to the idea first espoused by Arthur C. Clarke that advanced technology was, to one not versed in it, indistinguishable from magic. We wanted to understand the magic so we could explain it to others. And the only way to unravel the magic was through science. Religion offered us explanations couched in the language of magic but could not offer us true understanding of those things.
Do not misunderstand me: there is truth in the faiths of the world. But those truths are stated in metaphors and parables designed for other times and other places–for people who did not know about atoms or parasites or the germ theory of disease or genetics or electricity or space stations; who believed the earth was flat and that all the universe revolved around it.
Despite my wife’s lack of formal religion, she was a good person who, quite literally, sacrificed her life for her students’ futures. Even before the illness had grown out into the hideous thing it would become, she was so dedicated to her work as a teacher that she gave up weekends and vacations to grade papers, prepare lessons, and do the reading and the coursework that would keep her current as a teacher and current in the knowledge of the sciences she taught.
But she understood the meaning of life in ways few others get to comprehend. She lived a life in service to humankind. She was a woman of science–but also a woman of deep faith. That faith came from no book and no religion–but came instead from the experience of her own life.
She knew love is what really matters–not love of God–but love for others–even for your enemies.
