Tag: religious truth

Different types of truth, part 3: scientific and religious truth

In my last two blogs I have discussed scientific truth and religious truth (sorry, haven’t worked out how to link back yet). I’ve used the analogy of a scientific model to explain how I was able to accept my growing faith intellectually as well as spiritually. The idea of a model is so central to my worldview as a scientist that it created a natural analogy for faith. The analogy works because their are similarities between these different ways of approaching things. But I do not want to give the impression that they are the same. In this blog I discuss the difference. 

Many of the arguments between science and religion seem, to me, to come from a lack of recognition of the difference between scientific truth and religious Truth (I add the capital not to imply a superiority of religious Truth, but to make a distinction and following the tradition of capitalising God). They are compounded by us not recognising that our scientific theories are models of scientific truth and our religious beliefs and practices are models of religious Truth. When we test religious models as though they were scientific truth or treat scientific models as though they were religious Truth we will never understand why we disagree with each other. 

First, and most obviously, they are searches for a very different set of questions. Science (particularly physics, my discipline) asks questions about the nature of the physical universe. It uses a scientific method of experimentation and observation, of developing theoretical models and using them to make predictions which can be tested. Science, at its best and ideal, is impersonal, independent of observer and is working towards agreement. 

Of course it is practised by human beings who can get emotional, personally involved and make mistakes. But the end aim is to get past that. That is achieved by scientific consensus – by bringing in more tests, more reviews, more theories. Now non-scientists often don’t get scientific consensus. It is assumed that that would imply nothing ever changes and because we know worldviews do shift (nobody believed plate techtonics or quantum physics when they were first proposed and now they are standard textbook stuff), the assumption is that scientific consensus has no more value than a religious truth.

When that assumption is made, it is fair to provide all points of view, to listen to the small number who disagree equally to the large number who agree. Anything else seems like invalidating the minority view or risking missing the genius.

Most scientists don’t understand that and get upset and frustrated by non-scientists going on about it. We know that scientific views do evolve over time. We know that there are step changes when someone sees things differently and gives others evidence they come to understand. Sometimes we will as imperfect people resist those changes, but I know many examples from my own career when I’ve argued with someone for months or years and then at some point we both “get it” and one of us admits we were wrong or we find a third way of looking at it. After that there is no more argument. Not because our beliefs have changed, but because we fundamentally recognise that one model is closer to scientific truth than the other. That’s because “is this model closer to scientific truth than that one?” is a question with a single answer for all people. We expect to reach consensus, even if we fight like mad on the way. 

Religious Truth does not have a single answer in the same way. That is because it’s not asking about how the universe works, but about how our relationships are with God and with each other. It is therefore as unique as each individual. 

That’s not to say that there aren’t patterns, or even a fundamental Truth that we are searching for, but all great religious thinkers from all traditions I’m aware of, seem to come back to words of Mystery, of accepting paradox and living at the edge, of Surrender (the Arabic word for Surrender is Islam, by the way), of emptying ourselves, of relationship, of Love. These are not ideas to explore using scientific methods. 

There have been attempts at making intellectually and philosophically robust theologies (which could be considered akin to treating models of religious Truth as models of scientific truth), but these, in my experience rarely in and of themselves bring people to that greater Love, to, from a Christian perspective, becoming more like Jesus in how he lived. When we treat religious Truth as scientific Truth we get arguments between Bible-literalists and atheists about the contradictions in the Bible or whether the Earth is billions or thousands of years old. Those arguments go round in circles, with no one persuading anyone and views becoming more polarised, more narrowly defined. 

We can investigate “falling in love” scientifically – it tells us why it helps the species, it tells us about people’s brain changes, hormonal changes and the behaviour changes (increased risk taking) these create. But it doesn’t really tell us what it feels like or what it means to those in love. For that we read a Shakespeare sonnet, or hear a great song.  (My love is not like a red rose. Human beings are animals and roses are plants and these diverged genetically billions of years ago!)

I am a physicist and I hate it when people think that whether climate change is real or not is a matter for discussion in the same way as what we should do about it is. But I also recognise that the people who do think it is have not seen the difference between scientific truth and other truths. 

I am a Quaker Christian. And I hate it when people reduce my faith to the limited questions that can be answered by the scientific method. But I also recognise that people who do think it is have not seen the difference between religious Truth and other truths. 

I’m not sure I’ve explained the difference well here, but it’s a start!

Different types of truth part 2: religious truth

I know God exists. I also believe, to paraphrase that science t-shirt (see previous blog), that the nice thing about God is that He exists whether or not you believe in Him. (I use Her and Him to refer to God and get different value from both, by the way).

Now, scientists reading this will be horrified by what I’ve just written. They intuitively understand that these are very different types of truth. Even other scientists who have a faith similar to mine will probably have a wry smile, recognising the point I’m making and recognising why it will horrify other scientists. 

I guess that many non-scientists, particularly those with religious faith, won’t understand what the problem is. And this, I think, is where seeming conflicts between science and religion start. 

Sometimes I see religious posters on public transport. These often give the message that “the Bible is right because it says it is”. Sometimes they are that explicit, sometimes they imply this by quoting Bible phrases at you. I don’t know who these adverts are aimed at, but my guess is that they are not very successful with converting an atheist. The people who create such posters are genuine and find this message helpful and convincing to them, they are likely not to understand what is wrong with the first paragraph. 

But I also think that scientists can become very blinkered in their own way. By prioritising scientific truth over all other kinds of truth, they risk both missing something valuable and alienating nonscientists. I want to build bridges and keep the dialogue open. 

When I realised I was becoming a Christian, I struggled intellectually as well as spiritually. What I want to describe is how I reconciled my faith and my intellect. I don’t do so to convince others, but simply to show one way of bridging that divide. I know that this makes no sense to either the atheist or those who believe there is only one true way to God. In later blogs I might explore their arguments (these initial posts are about setting the basis of my own thoughts, providing my axioms, if you like).

My faith starts with my experience. In worship I feel myself come spiritually into resonance with something beyond and within me, which I call God. In everyday life I can also sense myself in, or out, of that resonance. It is hard to describe in words what it feels like, but it is a combination of physical feeling and a sense of rightness. It has a lot in common with feeling “in love” – an experience most of us have and which science can explain in terms of evolutionary need and chemical changes in our hormones, but somehow we all know has some reality in and of itself beyond those explanations. Indeed, feeling in spiritual resonance with God feels like being in Love and always leads to Love, in its broadest, most open sense. 

When I stay in that resonance I am changed, transformed. I widen my understanding, encompass a fuller truth, learn to forgive and be forgiven. When I read the Bible I hear stories of people who have had similar experiences. I recognise in those stories my own struggles, failures and steps into becoming more than I was. When I read about Jesus I recognise a man who was in such perfect resonance with God that the Love of God flowed out of him and was seen by those who met him and either entranced them or made them fight it. (I have also developed a theology around the specific details, but this isn’t the time to share that).

Now, one of the key things for me in spiritual understanding is to think in duality, not dualism. In other words to hold mutually contradictory things in tension and live at that dissonance. It was physics that first taught me to do that. I found a way to handle wave particle duality that was absurdly simple: a photon is not a wave and not a particle. It’s a photon and it behaves as photons behave. We, with our limited intellect, need models to explain the photon. So when it is travelling through space we find the model of a wave helpful and we think of it as a wave. When it interacts with matter (say a detector!) we find a particle model more helpful. We must never forget that these are our models to deal with our intellectual limitations, because the photon goes on being a photon. 

Now, when it comes to God we are not just intellectually limited, we are spiritually limited, too. So here, too, we create models. Some are intellectual models (theology), some are spiritual models (practices, mysticism) and many are parables, stories that give us glimpses of some aspect. Different people, developing this in different communities, came up with different descriptive models and therefore you have different religions. When we treat the religion as Truth, rather than as a model pointing to Truth, we can get hung up on the differences, consider ourselves right and them wrong (religious people) or delight in pointing out the inconsistencies between different models in use in the same religion as proof that they are wrong (atheists).

I choose to follow a single set of models (a Quaker Christianity) exclusively. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognise truth in the other models, but so far I have not reached a spiritual limit of the models I have (consider Einsteinian gravity expanding Newtonian). And by sticking to one set, rather than mixing up those of different faiths, I find it harder to avoid the uncomfortable bits which lead to me being transformed! I know enough of myself to know that I could make this an intellectual exploration of different faiths, picking nice bits from each. Sticking to one forces me to follow its path through the uncomfortable.