Two Ways of Thinking

When we deal with religious questions and scientific questions we are dealing with two different ways of describing reality.  I do not mean that one or the other is some kind of alternative reality as is fashionable just now in the political arena.  I mean that religion and science deal with the same reality, but have  a different way of describing it and the two should not be confused.  The book of Genesis in the Bible is not a scientific account of creation, and it should not be interpreted as scientific.  The book of Genesis asks, “Why?” and its answer is “God.”  Science looks at the world and asks, “How?” and its answer is that the world has evolved over millions of centuries—an answer that does not in any way undermine belief in God.

Robert McAfee Brown used four statements to make this point:

2+2=4

I love you.

Babe Ruth hit 619 home runs in his major league career.

I love you too.

The first and the third statements are of a different order from statements two and four.  One and three are factually verifiable:  “you can look them up.”  Statements two and four cannot be “proved” in the same way; but they can be just as “true” for a meaningful living of life as any of the “factual” statements. 

Shakespeare in the play, As You Like It, tells us that there are “…tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones.”  He is saying that there are lessons to be learned from the woods and the metaphors he uses help underline the truth of his statement.  But the statement is obviously not “TRUE” as an actual literal set of facts.  A proof-reader would revise the statement to read:  not “tongues” in trees—but “trunks in trees, stones in the running brooks, sermons in books.”  That would make the statement factually true—that is, scientifically accurate, but quite unimportant.  Shakespeare’s statement is a valuable description of the woods while the proof-reader’s factual version is pointless.

Science can tell us how old the world is and how it has developed  by analyzing the evidence.  Science cannot tell us why the world has come into being. We live in the same reality—we just have two different ways of describing it.  One asks, “How” and the other asks, “Why.”  (It really isn’t that simple, but I thought my thoughts on the matter might help someone).

Back yard wonders continue...