If we make the right decisions as we seek to bridge the science/religion divide we can edge forward step by step, fighting poverty, suffering, social evils and abuses of nature. Human nature is open, and not just to evil. The choice is ours. The science and religion debate is the attempt to make a choice for the better.
My own belief is that religion is itself a product of evolution. It evolved to provide a niche for intelligent beings who probe the sense and meaning of experience in order to achieve a deep level of understanding, and who embed their questions and their answers in literature and in history in order to accommodate the emotional and the experiential dimensions of their search.
What is the divide in this debate, and why has it only got under way over the past two decades, while the differences have been apparent since the days of the Enlightenment?
The divide is between nature and the supernatural. A host of contraries fall in this bracket: religion versus facts (observation); traditional versus modern-day ethos; a world of miracles versus a closed, nomological world; and fundamentalism versus realism.
But why now? It is because physical science’s telescope makes us look beyond the myopic horizon of faith into the prehistory of our beginnings.
If the ”divides” evolved so organically then, why does this will to build reconciliatory bridges exist?
In a global context tending towards a monolithic democratic and human rights order, in the straitjacket of a global economy, and in the cyber-playground, communication links are inevitably forged. They instil awareness of diversity and multiplicity, but sometimes also a desire for ”unity”.
Sacred and profane
After all, the segmentation of life into the sacred and the profane is artificial. Traditional Africa, for instance, knows no such dichotomy.
It is a myth that people who do not belong to an institutionalised church are necessarily godless, immoral creatures with no values. On the contrary, as is evident in Europe today, secularised people respect transcendence. Although they may conceive of it metaphorically, they are socially and ecologically responsible without using God as a lever. They cherish values that they consider meaningful for human life and coexistence, and they may tell their grandchildren biblical and other stories with great conviction because they depict the diversity of human experience in a special way. But they refuse to be bullied by fears of devils and darkness, punishment and retribution.
They have learnt to overcome ethno-centricity and they leave scope for various forms of love and relationships. They don’t look to God for reasons for tsunamis or earthquakes, but are ready to assist the victims, even if those victims espouse beliefs and world views very different from their own. They favour freedom of religion but protest when fundamentalism threatens world peace, or when people are shackled to a particular lifestyle with empty promises and false hopes. They have a sense of responsibility for the future of our planet.
Blind, not dumb
Modernity was ushered in by the Enlightenment with its vast optimism about the ability of human reason to solve the problems of the universe and make our world a better place. Inadvertently optimism turned into hubris and modernity hurtled like a runaway train into the cataclysmic world wars of the 20th century.
Two reasons can be singled out for this loss of control: the increasing role that instrumental reason came to play until it became objectified in our technological world, and the global market, a giant octopus empowered by communication and information technology. On the one hand nobody seems to control information and on the other techno-science, a spin-off of instrumental reason, has become the subject relegating humans to objects. Modernism still managed to integrate technology, society and religious or moral beliefs. It did so by humanising transcendence. What is left in its wake are deified human systems and new transcendental values: the market, democracy, human rights. Such systems dominate no less than the absolute rulers and the church of the Middle Ages.
Cornel du Toit is head of the Research Institute for Theology and Religion at Unisa