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During my time on Twitter, I have dealt with quite an assortment of individuals, ranging from COVID-19 and global warming deniers, 2020 election skeptics, and antivaxxers, to proponents of the 911 and chemtrail conspiracies, creationists, Flat Earthers, and QAnon. Apart from these people, I have also had to deal with a group of people whom I had not expected to cross paths with: militant atheists! But here I am not talking about people merely claiming that God does not exist or people pushing for freedom from religion. When I say “militant atheists”, I mean people who claim that a belief in God is incompatible with rational thinking. These people often insult believers calling them stupid or other monikers, while claiming that the belief in God has no place in a mind devoted to rationality and science. I find this claim surprising because the concept of God is beyond the realm of science. It cannot be proven or disproven by science. Viewed from this vantage point, in fact, atheism is not a rigorous intellectual position rationally grounded in evidence and facts, but rather just another belief. In any case, the claim that believers are somehow stupid or irrational is simply not true. For example, when it comes to scientists, some of the greatest scientific minds in the history of science as well as good number of contemporary scientists of renown (including Nobel Prize winners) have been or are believers. Several examples are Nicolaus Copernicus, Blaise Pascal, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Rene Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Isaac Newton, Leonhard Euler, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Antonie Lavoisier, Louis Pasteur, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, John Dalton, Max Planck, Robert Millikan, Werner Heisenberg, Arthur Compton, Albert Einstein, John Eccles, Gerty Cori, Joseph Murray, Freeman Dyson, Antony Hewish, and Peter Grunberg.  A Pew Research Center poll of scientists in 2009 found that, while the proportion of scientists that believe in God is lower than that of the general population, about 33% of scientists believe in God while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power. The point is that rational thinking is not necessarily hindered by belief in a God, spirit, or a higher power. Having said that, everything depends, of course, on what you believe, how you believe it, and your circumstances. Take for example the belief in creationism. If you are a scientist who believes that the world is 10,000 years old, you will have problems if you work in fields such as geology or astronomy. If you don’t accept evolution, you will have problems if you work in fields such as biology, genetics, or molecular biology. On the other hand, if you are a scientist in the field of metallurgy, belief in creationism may not affect your work at all. I believe in God (although not the God depicted by traditional religions), and I don’t believe myself to be irrational or stupid. I also I do not find my belief to be in contradiction with science, as I subscribe to the proposal by the late Harvard paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, that science and religion have “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA). This means that science and religion have different areas of expertise, and rather than be in conflict with each other they should complement each other because science lacks what religion has and vice versa. Things such as values, morals, ethics, right and wrong, good and bad are the realm of religion. On the other hand, the behavior of matter and energy in the world around us is the realm of science. Religion and related disciplines should guide us in navigating the tricky maze of moral choices that we make throughout our lives. But science should guide us in choosing which beliefs to accept, modify, or discard when aspects of these beliefs clash with reality. Of course, there are some areas of friction between science and religion, but the goal is to deal with these cases in a way that endeavors to maximize the separation between the areas of competence of the two disciplines. When it comes to the belief in a God, spirit, or a higher power, I distinguish two modalities. The first modality occurs when individuals come to accept the existence of God through a process that involves faith and evidence, facts, and reason. I consider this a healthy belief in God because there is an intellectual element involved in the process. The second modality is one that occurs when the process described in the first modality is deficient or absent. This occurs, for example, when individuals believe in God because they were taught to believe in God, or because they grew up surrounded by people who believed in God. In these cases, the belief in God is just a form of social inertia. Another way of believing in God within this second modality is through a highly emotional event that may have involved a conversion from living a wicked life, or at least a life a person felt bad about, into being a better person. For these people the mere fact that they changed their lives is proof that God exists and made this happen and no further analysis is necessary. This second modality of belief in God is unhealthy, because it is unexamined and therefore prone to the uncritical acceptance of the beliefs of groups or churches that may hold views of the world that are contrary to science and reason. Most scientists who believe in God, a spirit, or a higher power, believe in them in a reasonable way, because they allow their beliefs to be tempered by evidence, facts, and reason. For example, evangelical protestants tend to have creationists views that deny the age of the Earth and evolution while accepting that there was a universal flood (although there are subtleties to this claim). In the Pew Research Center poll mentioned above, while 28% of the general public claimed an evangelical protestant affiliation, only 4% of scientists did. To recap, I don’t consider the belief in God to be anathema to rational thinking, but I do consider that the unexamined belief in God is unhealthy, as it may lead to the denial of the reality around us as discovered by science. Image by Van Ericsen was taken from flickr and is used here under an Attribution 4.0 International Deed. The image was not modified and the licensor does not endorse my use of this image.
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Although this is a science blog, I often address instances when belief clashes with science. I subscribe to the notion that religion and science have expertise over different areas and should be kept separate as per the concept of non-overlapping magisteria advocated by the late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. But I recognize there will be cases where that separation becomes fuzzy or unworkable. I have made the point several times in my blog that science is the best method we have to discover the truth about the behavior of matter and energy in the world around us, and this is not an opinion. The success of science in discovering how the natural world works is plain for all but the most irrational skeptics to see. However, at the same time I accept that science cannot operate in a vacuum, and we have to contend with the reality of belief. In these trying times when we are in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the crucial guidelines that scientists have issued to our population is the need for social distancing and avoiding crowds to reduce the spread of the virus. This guideline is derived from our knowledge of how the virus spreads. Because of this I was shocked when I saw the video below. This woman, who had just attended a church gathering where dozens of people hugged and assembled inside, has the firm conviction that the virus won’t infect her, and that she will not give it to others, because Jesus is protecting her. Most people will criticize the belief of this woman and her congregation and view them intellectually in unflattering terms. However, I understand the need that people have for religion, especially during trying times such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact this is nothing new. For millennia, human beings have invoked the deity to help them overcome challenges. I also understand that for many individuals, psychological well-being is often as important as physical well-being. This is not to say that all religious congregations have responded in the way this one did. The majority are offering virtual religious services and other activities that follow social distancing guidelines. But there are a substantial number that are still refusing, and these can (and have) become hot beds of virus spread. However, I don’t think this is solely a religious issue. In the United States, there is a distrust of government among many people. Any ordinance that in any way limits freedom is viewed with suspicion. If you include that there is the belief among some religious groups that a war is being waged on Christianity by atheists aligned with liberal organizations that wish to spread socialism and destroy the American way of life, you begin to get the idea of what may really be transpiring behind this opposition to common sense safety rules that interfere with regular worship. To this, of course, you must add the delegitimization of science that has taken place in our society, and the rise of antiscience movements such as those that advocate opposition to vaccination and climate change denial or the acceptance of conspiracy theories ranging from 911 and chemtrails to the flat Earth.  I believe, however, that there are ways to harmonize belief with science. If you look at the video of the woman again, you can see that she is wearing a seat belt. This makes sense, as science has generated evidence that seat belts along with air bags save lives during collisions. The woman probably doesn’t even think about this when she adjusts her seat belt upon entering the car. She also probably doesn’t even consider driving without a seat belt expecting Jesus to protect her in case of a crash. Additionally, the church she attends probably has lighting rods on top of the roof to protect the building and the people inside from lighting. It is likely that no one in the congregation has even considered removing the lightning rods and relying just on their faith in Jesus to protect the church. So there are clearly science-derived safety measures that these people accept. Why not then accept the safety measures against the coronavirus?
While it’s true that, unlike the acceptance of seat belts or lighting rods, the social distancing guidelines impose a serious restriction in their ability to worship, in essence the occurrence of a viral pandemic is not different from a lighting strike: they are both natural phenomena. Car crashes are a more artificial situation, but they can be rationalized in terms of collisions among moving bodies (a physical phenomenon). If these people have accepted, or at least don’t question, the science and the necessity behind seat belts lighting rods and other such safety measures in their daily lives, how can we convince them that the safety measures against the virus are no different? As it turns out, many religious congregations, including some that share the same brand of Christianity as that of the woman in the video, have already taken care of this issue. They argue that God has responded to our prayers to keep us safe by giving us science, and through science we can understand how the world works and react accordingly. Viewed from this vantage point, applying our God-given science to come up with safety guidelines for the coronavirus is no different from applying it to come up with things like seat belts or lighting rods. No conspiracy. No attack on Christianity, No atheism or socialism. Science does not have an ideology. Science is a tool, and it the right hands it can be used for good. Of course, the above argument that God has given us science is a religious argument and therefore outside the scope of science. But if it means having people accept safety measures that will save lives, I am all for it. Rather than condemn and berate these people for their beliefs, I am of the opinion that the best way to proceed is to search for individuals whom these religious denominations will trust, and have them deliver this argument. Then it can be worked out how to adapt the coronavirus safety guidelines to meet the needs of these religious congregations. Image by geralt from pixabay is for public use. |
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