A friend of mine, whom I respect highly, recently recommended a series of podcasts by recorded at the Veritas Forum after hearing about my recent series of spiritual doubts. The Veritas Forum (VF) is an organization dedicated to giving Christianity a voice in the broader intellectual conversations that are going on in academia. It began in Harvard, though it has extended to other prestigious centers of learning as well. So far, I have been very pleased with the quality of the speakers and debaters that have appeared on the episodes that I have listened to: Ivy League professors, world renown scientists, Nobel laureates, etc. Now, VF is a wonderful organization and I wish there were more like it, but I believe that most of the debates end up running into the same problem:
So far all the debates have been science based, though there are probably other types out there that I haven't listened to yet. Now, I think it is important that science and religion are not kept in completely separate spheres, but most of the debates between Christian and atheist scientists really doesn't go anywhere. Neither can really convince the other of anything; at the very most they can come to a place where they agree on the inevitability of scientific uncertainty when it comes to matters of faith. In the end, the real issue is an issue of experience and belief, and that cannot really be argued. They speak different languages, and so the debates end up sounding quite hollow.
One of the main problem with these kinds of debates is that they seem so... outdated. What I mean is that the whole idea of debating Christianity between two scientists, of apologetics, seems like a relic of the modernist age. This makes sense, seeing as how most of these scientists are logicians and mathematicians at their core, ascribing to some form or descendant of logical positivism that has no place or interest in continuing a conversation that deals with that which is unprovable. So, while it is possible for two of these men to debate the effects of religion on society, or the apparent incongruities between a religious view of the universe and a purely scientific cosmology... they lack the dialectical tools to push the conversations into the realms of experience and philosophy.
Certainly I see value in knowing that men of faith are also men of science; I do take comfort in the fact that there are geniuses of science that are comfortable also holding spiritual, illogical beliefs and that one doesn't erase the other. But that is just the problem, the one doesn't cancel the other because they are, for the most part, separate conversations. It is good to know that they are not necessarily (or at all) mutually exclusive, but still... they are in different spheres. A Christian professor might be able to eloquently debate many of the atheist professor's arguments against a deity or a spiritual aspect to the universe, or to argue against the objectivity of a purely scientific world view, or argue for the value of religion, or for the historicity of biblical texts... but they all find it pretty impossible to make the jump from those kinds of logical arguments to explaining why they ascribe to the tenets of a pauline theology without bringing personal experience into the conversation. And since personal experience cannot be subjected to the scientific method, the conversation falls apart.
I feel like this might have been a satisfactory place to be 30 years ago. Heck, maybe it's a satisfactory place to be for the more logical minded people who are attracted to debates in the first place, but I find it lacking. If there is one thing that post-modern philosophy has taught us it is the inevitability of uncertainty and the necessity to acknowledge personal experience and "revelation" as part of our process for finding "truth." I have always had a hard time with uncertainty, as this blog shows.
So far all the debates have been science based, though there are probably other types out there that I haven't listened to yet. Now, I think it is important that science and religion are not kept in completely separate spheres, but most of the debates between Christian and atheist scientists really doesn't go anywhere. Neither can really convince the other of anything; at the very most they can come to a place where they agree on the inevitability of scientific uncertainty when it comes to matters of faith. In the end, the real issue is an issue of experience and belief, and that cannot really be argued. They speak different languages, and so the debates end up sounding quite hollow.
One of the main problem with these kinds of debates is that they seem so... outdated. What I mean is that the whole idea of debating Christianity between two scientists, of apologetics, seems like a relic of the modernist age. This makes sense, seeing as how most of these scientists are logicians and mathematicians at their core, ascribing to some form or descendant of logical positivism that has no place or interest in continuing a conversation that deals with that which is unprovable. So, while it is possible for two of these men to debate the effects of religion on society, or the apparent incongruities between a religious view of the universe and a purely scientific cosmology... they lack the dialectical tools to push the conversations into the realms of experience and philosophy.
Certainly I see value in knowing that men of faith are also men of science; I do take comfort in the fact that there are geniuses of science that are comfortable also holding spiritual, illogical beliefs and that one doesn't erase the other. But that is just the problem, the one doesn't cancel the other because they are, for the most part, separate conversations. It is good to know that they are not necessarily (or at all) mutually exclusive, but still... they are in different spheres. A Christian professor might be able to eloquently debate many of the atheist professor's arguments against a deity or a spiritual aspect to the universe, or to argue against the objectivity of a purely scientific world view, or argue for the value of religion, or for the historicity of biblical texts... but they all find it pretty impossible to make the jump from those kinds of logical arguments to explaining why they ascribe to the tenets of a pauline theology without bringing personal experience into the conversation. And since personal experience cannot be subjected to the scientific method, the conversation falls apart.
I feel like this might have been a satisfactory place to be 30 years ago. Heck, maybe it's a satisfactory place to be for the more logical minded people who are attracted to debates in the first place, but I find it lacking. If there is one thing that post-modern philosophy has taught us it is the inevitability of uncertainty and the necessity to acknowledge personal experience and "revelation" as part of our process for finding "truth." I have always had a hard time with uncertainty, as this blog shows.
1 comment:
This has captured well pretty much what I think of these kinds of debates. Thanks for putting words to it. By the way, Wittgenstein's later work (on aesthetics especially) and Barth from a theological point of view really helped me in getting past these pseudo-scientific apologetic-based approaches.
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