NOMA: Science and Religion
In popular culture, the relationship between science and religion is often seen as uneasy. To suppose that this tension reflects reality, at least according to the late Stephen Jay Gould, is false, unnecessary, illogical and even mythical.
In the place of the supposed tension, he proposes the Non-Overlapping Magisterium (NOMA), and suggests that rather than being a recent addition to the debate, NOMA actually "represents a longstanding consensus among the majority of both scientific and religious leaders [and is] not a controversial or idiosyncratic resolution (64)."
Gould identifies a magisterium as a "domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution (4)," and he proposes that science holds the tools for meaningful discourse and resolution in one domain, namely that of the "documentation of the factual character of the natural world, and [the ability] to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts (4)," while religion possesses the tools necessary to provide discourse and resolution for "the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meaning and values (4)." The domains do not overlap, and one is not superior to the other.
Jesuit philosopher Job Kozhamthadam refers to NOMA as "a great improvement over the ‘conflict and warfare’ model, but that it suffers from serious deficiencies." Perhaps we can flesh these deficiencies out in the comment section (Job won’t be with us however), but until then perhaps one example will suffice.
Richard Dawkins notes that
It is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science’s turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind than one without. Religion makes existence claims, and this means science claims (64).
Adherents to the more historical understanding of Christianity believe that the Mother of Jesus virginally conceived him. Such a claim cannot lie solely in the realm of the religious for it makes a claim that is grounded in reality and therefore intelligible via science. Similarly, Christians who believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus are also making a claim that enters into the scientific realm of explanation. The Ascension of Jesus, the Assumption of Mary, the general miracle stories, the Marian apparitions, all of these fall within the domain of science, and this must not simply be seen as overlap, but also as a breach of faith between the scientific and religious communities if NOMA is to be accepted, especially since in the case of each of these instances, religion seeks the subordination of the scientific realm, which would otherwise have must to say regarding the probability of such irregularities.
K.
Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York, NY: The Library of Contemporary Thought, 1999).
Richard Dawkins, ‘You Can’t Have it Both Ways: Irreconcilable Differences?’ Skeptical Inquirer 23, no. 4 (July/August, 1999).
For there to be no conflict, science would have to humble itself a little and make it clear that it concerns itself with general laws, not universal laws. In other words, it would have to concede that miracles are possible. Science would also have to accept that there may be ways of knowing reality that are beyond the scientific method, but still get to the truth.
Obviously religion also has to be willing to concede those facts that science positively demonstrates, and so humility is required on both sides. But I think the ideal of no-conflict is possible without violating the integrity of either.
Clayton
Comment by Clayton — November 6, 2007 @ 1:20 pm
Hi Kelly,
You Wrote: “Adherents to the more historical understanding of Christianity believe that the Mother of Jesus virginally conceived him. Such a claim cannot lie solely in the realm of the religious for it makes a claim that is grounded in reality and therefore intelligible via science.”
You then went on to mention the Ascension of Jesus, the Assumption of Mary, the miracle stories and the Marian apparitions, claiming that all these fall within the domain of science.
They don’t, for a very simple reason: They are presented as miracles, and science is not competent to judge the whether or not a miracle has occurred. Its competence is limited to explaining what can or can’t happen according to accepted scientific principles. It has no competence to say whether or not the order of things as science understands it could be suspended by Divine power. Besides that, insofar as scientific knowledge is based on generalizations made on the basis of empirical observations, it is not competent to exclude one time events, to limit the possibilities of existence to those which are consistent with its generalizations. All it can say is, this is what we have seen, and, on that basis, this is the scientific principle.
The existence claims that religion makes are based on a power which empirical science doesn’t deal with and which it is not competent to judge. So, of course, science cannot, by definition, acknowledge them (although scientists, of course, can). To say that that the only things that can happen or exist are those which scientific principles can explain is itself a statement which science is not competent to make. It is rather the delusion of arrogant scientists who succumb to the temptation to limit what is real to the scope of what they know.
Richard
Comment by Richard — November 6, 2007 @ 1:31 pm
Thanks Clayton for the comment (your first here). I agree that for NOMA to work there has to be humility on both sides. Part of humility is in recognizing the possibility of certain things, and not simply saying ‘No’ or ‘Yes’ to metaphysical claims. On the religious side, there has to be a respect of science, and a willingness to see how new findings reinterpret previously held beliefs.
Now Richard, when I said that the Ascension of Jesus, the Assumption of Mary, the miracle stories and the Marian apparitions, fell within the domain of science I was careful to say they “cannot lie solely in the realm of the religious for [they make] claims that are grounded in reality and therefore intelligible via science.”
But I agree, they are presented as extraordinary phenomenon, and naturally their likelihood statistically is based on naturalistic assumptions. However, because they are grounded in reality, they are intelligible via science.
Sure scientists are not competent to judge where a miracle has occurred, but they can still tell us the physical realities. A miracles is metaphysical, beyond the physical, and it is the physical that science claims access to. However, miracles still fall within their domain.
Take the October 13, 1917 gathering of 70, 000 people in Fatima, where the sun seemed to tear itself from the heavens and come crashing down on the horrified multitude and only stopped at the last minute. One one hand “we are asked to believe in a mass hallucination, a trick of the light, or a mass lie involving 70,000 people [and] this is admittedly improbable but it is less improbable than the alternative: that the sun really did move. The sun that was hanging over Fatima was not, after all, a private sun; it was the same sun that warmed all the other millions of people on the daylight side of the planet (Dawkins, ‘Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder [NY, First Mariner Books, 1998], 127).”
So naturally Science cannot say ‘A miracle has occurred,’ but they can judge the physical realities.
-Have the stories of the 70, 000 been checked?
-Did others who could reasonalbe oberserve the sun’s movement see the sun move?
-What evidence supports the movement (burned continents?)?
Here, if the stories is fleshed out, and the evidence demands a particular conclusion, we follow the evidence. But I think as Clayton said, humility is required. We cannot be 100% sure when it comes to dealing with metaphysical claims, and our immediate response should always be, I believe, caution.
K.
Comment by K. — November 6, 2007 @ 2:53 pm
Hi Kelly,
You Wrote: “Now Richard, when I said that the Ascension of Jesus, the Assumption of Mary, the miracle stories and the Marian apparitions, fell within the domain of science I was careful to say they “cannot lie solely in the realm of the religious for [they make] claims that are grounded in reality and therefore intelligible via science.”
Richard: Nothing that happens in the physical world is solely within the domain of religion, because insofar as it is a physical phenomenon it is appropriately the subject of scientific inquiry. But the investigation of the physical world can yield nothing more than statements about the physical world, which excludes statements that establish or deny the miraculous. When I was a freshman in college (many years ago), I took an introduction to biology class. One day, the professor declared that angels don’t exist. I promptly arose and objected that it was beyond the competence and authority of science to say that, and he retracted on the spot (for which I remember him with respect). The interesting thing is that, though when confronted, he retracted his statement, his grasp of the limitations of science did not inhibit him from saying it in the first place.
You wrote: But I agree, they are presented as extraordinary phenomenon, and naturally their likelihood statistically is based on naturalistic assumptions. However, because they are grounded in reality, they are intelligible via science.
Richard: Everything that happens is grounded in reality. The question is, what level of reality: the physical or the spiritual, the worldly or the Divine? The Incarnation was also grounded in reality—the reality of G-d’s love and the reality of the Triune G-d. Just as the incarnation is not intelligible via science, miracles are not intelligible via science. Knowledge of the physical world cannot make a miracle intelligible. It can only require the man of faith to think more deeply about what really happened and what it means.
You wrote: Sure scientists are not competent to judge where a miracle has occurred, but they can still tell us the physical realities. A miracles is metaphysical, beyond the physical, and it is the physical that science claims access to. However, miracles still fall within their domain.
Take the October 13, 1917 gathering of 70, 000 people in Fatima, where the sun seemed to tear itself from the heavens and come crashing down on the horrified multitude and only stopped at the last minute. One one hand “we are asked to believe in a mass hallucination, a trick of the light, or a mass lie involving 70,000 people [and] this is admittedly improbable but it is less improbable than the alternative: that the sun really did move. The sun that was hanging over Fatima was not, after all, a private sun; it was the same sun that warmed all the other millions of people on the daylight side of the planet (Dawkins, ‘Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder [NY, First Mariner Books, 1998], 127).”
Richard: Here, the issue is: what was the miracle? Was it that the sun as an astronomical body tore itself from the heavens? Or was it something else? Science can point out that to say that it was really the sun is to posit a miracle of vast proportions, a suspension of just about every law of nature we know.
But the advocate of the miracle could still say that it was really the sun that moved. After all, big miracles are no harder for the omnipotent G-d that small ones. But big miracles are less credible and why should we assume that it was a big miracle when we could just as well say it was a smaller one? Ockham’s razor. Our knowledge of the natural world makes us more aware of the “cost” of miracles, and our scientific culture makes us less open to believing in miracles. The question of defining the miracle becomes a fascinating exercise in balancing the two sides for the sake of maximizing the impact and credibility of the miracle.
You wrote: So naturally Science cannot say ‘A miracle has occurred,’ but they can judge the physical realities.
Richard: In this case, the physical reality is especially unclear. There are certainly cases where science can judge the physical reality. In the case of the Shroud of Turin, for example, scientific research has investigated the physical realities and excluded, at least for now, any natural explanation of the image. But whatever judgment science makes, it cannot exclude the existence of the miracle unless it can show that what was taken to be an unnatural was really a natural phenomenon. Scientific knowledge makes it harder to claim the existence of a miracle, because it makes us more aware of the extent to which G-d had to suspend the normal operations of nature in order to do it. And it would seem that there would be a certain proportion between the measure of a miracle and the importance of its message. So, for example, to say that the sun really tore itself lose is tantamount to saying that the miracle had enormous meaning, which the theologians then have to justify. In our prescientific past, miracles were more readily accepted because there was less concern for this equation between the measure of the miracle and the measure of its meaning. The advancement of science and the scientific orientation of our culture challenges the man of faith to think more carefully about the meaning and importance of the miraculous events he claims to have happened.
Richard
Comment by Richard — November 7, 2007 @ 1:16 am
I agree that the investigation of the physcial world can yield nothing more than statements about the physical world, and would add that when the moment comes that a scientist is defending or denying the validity of something seen as miraculous, s/he has entered into a metaphysical realm, and that of coarse is a branch of philosophy. Your Professor, just like any other person, has every right to make claims about the metaphysical, but the moment such a person does, those claims should be recognized for what they are, philosophical ones, and not scientific. I am happy to hear that your Professor has the honesty to admit that he had overstepped his bounds, and attempted to impose in scientific credentials on a philosophical issue.
When I say certain phenomenon are intelligible via science, I mean, precisely because they deal, at least, in part, physcically with the world (i.e. a dead man rising from the dead), science has something to say. There is overlap in domains. The tools that science has to tell us about physciality (i.e. dead men don’t have a habit of rising from the dead) cannot be ignored, but I agree, science cannot say “dead man can’t rise,” but they can give us probabilities that do influence our own interpretation of an event.
Regarding the example of the Sun in Fatima, again, since we have physicality being approached, we cannot but hear the contribtions of scientists. Otherwise everytime there is something deemed a miracle (and perhaps we can agree that there are more miracle claims then there are miracles?), scientists are relegated to the back benches, and that places their magisterium on a lower level than the one that the religious hold. Just beceause science cannot comment on the validity of the miracle, doesn’t mean they have nothing at all to say on the subject, as I am sure you agree.
Take the Shroud of Turin which you cite: Ultimately scientific study cannot tell us whether the face imprinted on it is really that of Jesus’. But they can tell us physically about the cloth that the face is found on (for example, from what time period does it come?). If they find the cloth is 5th century material, to hold at the same time that the imprinted face on it is Jesus, and that it still comes from the fifth century becomes more difficult rationally. For religious people to insist on a miracle anyway, while certainly possible (conceding the existence of miracles) it would not be responsible rationally. So it is important to be cautious about jumping at every perceived miracle, and science can offer us some healthy checks I think.
I find your comments interesting and informative. The scientific realm is not my preferred area of study (I am a literature person by choice), so perhaps my language in a few places in imprecise. Thank you for bearing with me.
K.
Comment by K. — November 7, 2007 @ 12:09 pm