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1. Sociology and theology need one another
Theology and sociology have much in common and each has influenced the other over time, both being shaped in turn by the socio-cultural context from which they arise. The best work on this is the the three volume work of Robin Gill (Ashgate). Both disciplines have an invisible object of analysis known only in their effects. The social is often the source of the imagery used by theology which is often then idolotrously reified in relating to God. We are about to celebrate Christ the King. Having lived in the USA, Canada and Australia I can say that each context gives rise to a different idea of kingship, monarchy etc. Since we are relational in our dealings with God the ideals and forms of social relationship familiar to us shape our approach. Parenting gives images of fathering. Our images of parenting have changed (thanks greatly to Dr Spock - No, not the Star Trek one) and following suit so have our images and expectations of God. On the other hand, punitive images of God including substituionary atonement shape the forms of parenting in turn re-inforcing punitive images of God.
Both sociology and theology are currently challenged by the realities of diversity, particularly religious diversity. We need not just to move beyond theologies of exclusion which dehumanize the other, but we need to move beyond theologies of inclusion (e.g. all is swept up in Christ the King, or “it is all in the Qur'an”) which while reducing hostility and conflict essentially turn other into self. We need theologies of difference which affirm diversity, including religious diversity as healthy, necessary for human life and sustainability, from a Christian point of view which sees diversity as part of the orders of creation and not a result of the Fall. If theolgy can do this it will assist sociologists embrace diversity and let go old fashioned modern notions that diversity meant weakness, and that in uniformity was strength. Conservative repressions of diversity in church and in society need to be overcome if we are to thrive.
Theology and sociology often face the same problems, and solutions in one are transposed to another.
Gary Bouma <gary.bouma@monash.edu>
Monash University, Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
2. Abstracts of two recently published articles
The image of the God to whom we pray:
AN EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHO-BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Based on knowledge generated through our outer senses and with our use of reasoning and within the scientific discipline of evolutionary psycho-biology we can make a reasonable presumption about God. The presumption concerns the image of the God to whom we pray. In the behavior that we use in the non-vocal aspect of petitioning prayer we (all persons of the three Abrahamic faiths) relate behaviorally in our «body language» to God, as though He is a high status male Lord rather than how modern children relate to a loving father. We do this even though "Father" is used for God in the various English translations of the NT more than the term "LORD". How this paradox could have developed and how it is resolved is presented.
Pensamiento, vol. 67 (2011), núm. 254, pp. 817-829
A NATURAL SCIENCE SEARCH FOR THE GOD TO WHOM WE PRAY
Of the many ways in which humans can search for God, natural science is for most persons not the first method that comes to mind. However, through a natural science approach some unique insights into God are possible. Religious behavior exists in objective material reality. If we can agree that by definition one of God’s attributes is to be the object of and reason for religious behavior, and if we can show that God’s presence in objective material reality is required to "release" a certain very specific type of religious behavior used in the non-vocal aspect of petitioning prayer, we have essentially made a reasonable natural science argument that the God to whom we pray also must exist in objective material reality. Conceptualizing God as an unknowable "thing in itself," through reverse engineering principles we will attempt to get beyond the appearances to address the questions of what and where in objective material reality the God to whom we pray is, which admittedly are unusual questions. Finally, some predictions will be made by which the predictive potency of this natural science approach to understanding the God to whom we pray can be tested.
Studies in Science & Theology 13, Yearbook of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology: 3-224, 2011/2012.
Jay R. Feierman <jay.feierman84@gmail.com>
University of New Mexico, Alboquerque, NM
3. Dialogue between Jay Feierman and Neville Ann Kelly.
Statements by Neville and replies by Jay:
Neville Ann Kelly: The sticking point here, for me, lies in the apparent dissociation between subjective and objective truth, or your apt “usefulness” of those conclusions.
Jay R. Feierman: That point is less sticky for me, as from my perspective "subjective truth" has its own set of epistemological rules that are separate and apart from the rules governing objective truth used in science. I subjectively know love when I experience it, and I also know subjectively know that I don't like lima beans. I don't need to know the chemistry of love or lima beans to hold these two subjective truths to be true. And the same with religious beliefs.
Neville Ann Kelly: If subjective beliefs, emotions, experiences have origin in the objective empirical or inter-objective cultural, their empirical basis would trump the validity of the subjective experience, or the interior wisdom it may abstractly and immeasurably generate.
Jay R. Feierman: My anthropologist friend Helen Fisher (Why We Love and The Anatomy of Love) studies MRIs of people in love and lust. She also studies which neurotransmitters and hormones are predominant in love, lust and attachment. Although the scientific value of her work is important, its truth value does not trump my subjective experience of love or my subjective experience when I eat lima beans. To me they are separate but equal ways of knowing.
Neville Ann Kelly: Though DNA, social learning, and biological function all have an undeniable role in religious phenomenon and experience, are they determinative of those experiences?
Jay R. Feierman: That’s a legitimate scientific question whose answer is not known, at least not at the present time. I know as a psychiatrist that when someone with Bipolar Disorder gets manic, they frequently get hyper-religious. So whether DNA, social learning, and biological function are determinantive of religious experiences, they certainly influence them. From my perspective religious experiences are "natural." As such, it is reasonable to try to understand them within the realm of the natural sciences.
Neville Ann Kelly: I am certainly open to other views, expanding my own as you do with your fascinating work!
Jay R. Feierman: The problem is that once one believes almost anything, but especially things having to do with religion or politics, the belief trumps the acceptance of contradicting information. So being "open" is a lot more difficult than it sounds.
Neville Ann Kelly <nevkel@gmail.com>
Mount Marty College, Yankton, SD
4. A Thomist position
For me, the topic is the seeming incompatibility of being scientifically minded and being a religious person, a person assenting to God's existence and providential sway. How ironic to be thinking about the seeming incompatibility today, on the feast of Albertus Magnus, one of the great medieval lights who was both empirical scientist and believer. I say "seeming" because I, like Albertus, think there is no incompatibility. But be frank about this topic. Many do. Many of my undergraduate students do. (e.g., Genesis is true in its literal import; evolution isn’t so.) Many scientists do. (90% of the National Academy of Scientists are sheer materialists, as J. Heft reports statistics in Horizons 35:203ff.) Quibble not on the accuracy of the percentage. For many learned people, being scientific and being a believer in God don't square’ While they square for me, I am sympathetic to the latter. For example, I fault some proponents of religion who so present the biblical creation stories or so present a doctrine of salvation (who’s saved and how is it gotten) that I wouldn’t believe either if these are views that must be acknowledged. I am also sympathetic to non-believing scientists because of the very power and achievements of scientific method. One is immersed in a world of matter, into laws governing how matter works, into scientifically verified outcomes benefiting human life and knowledge that reinforce daily in one’s mind that matter is what is, and this is all that is. The Intelligent Design folk did a great disservice in their effort to assert biological evolution and to assert God’s role in it by arguing that there are inexplicable complexities here and there that require God’s designing hand or direct involvement. In other words, they contended that there is a scientific evidence of God’s presence in the world. I think that the more one looks into a scientific conundrum, the more one is simply looking for a scientific cause or phenomenon yet unexplained. One is not peering into where God lurks when looking into such a conundrum window. I myself am much indebted to Aquinas (as Joe Bracken will well remember), and although the language of primary cause and secondary causes can get pretty foggy pretty fast, here is the analogy I use with undergraduates, trying to say to them, without ever using the word metaphysical, that the presence of God in this material world of ours is a metaphysical insight.
A primary cause enables a secondary cause to be and to unfold in its characteristic manner of causing. A musician playing a violin provides an analogy. The strains of music, the effect, are caused by the nature of the violin, leading someone to say: “the music is coming from a violin, not a cello.” But the violin would not be causing its unique effect of violin-like sounds unless a person plays it. Furthermore, the sounds are not simply random sounds; they are, rather, sounds infused with an emotional feeling, or with a player’s or composer’s ideas. The musician is the primary cause, the violin is the secondary cause, of the music. As soon as the musician stops playing, stops being a primary cause, the violin ceases being a cause, too.
It is in this manner that God is said to be the primary cause of the world. God has, in the plan of being the world’s creator, established secondary causes that make the world unfold in manners reflecting these secondary causes. God as primary cause enables/sustains secondary causes to be and to work. Science studies secondary causes, but science simple sees them as laws of nature."
Edward Jeremy Miller, <miller.e@gmc.edu>
Gwynedd Mercy University
Gwynedd Valley, PA 19437
5. Comment from Dee
Ah, Ed. You sound SO Thomistic. Refreshing. One doesn’t hear that often these days. I’ve always thought that the dichotomy between science and belief is silly. With a biology major and masters’ work and the Ph. D. in theology, it has always seemed to me that these two are indeed compatible. One need not take the stories of the Bible literally--the Achilles’ heel for many. In fact, a richer meaning is almost trivialized by treating them that way. Genesis 3 isn’t about fruit and locked garden gates and rocky soil as much as it is about the reality of human insecurity and doubt and its consequences. When we want to be what we are not ("like God") because we don’t like who we are (God’s marvelous creation), all our relationships suffer.
It is always amusing to me to see scientists who study the brain try to capture its workings in non-transcendent boxes. It never works completely. As a moralist I am struck that Catholic morals have always made room for "impediments" to freedom and knowledge in moral choice, some of which are very biological. What we have learned in recent years about the body and its workings (dopamine may produce gamblers, good Cinnamon smell makes people more altruistic, more of a certain chromosome leads to schizophrenia, cat urine smell gives a person a tendency to be a hoarder --yes!) just shows how wise the tradition has been over centuries.
Dolores Christee dlchristie@aol.com
University Heights, OH 44118
6. Interconnectedness
Neither philosophy, science, religion, culture, interpersonal relatedness or spirituality can lay absolute claim on any aspect of human knowledge or experience. In fact, there is clear connectedness between each of these domains—though often relentlessly challenged by those claiming their domain’s ultimate authority—that any phenomenon manifests.
Such interconnectedness, however, does not imply that domains can forcefully exert their methods, insights, and processes upon others whose operations are indisputably different. Mysticism did not create trigonometry or the calculator. The precision of the scientific method has little to say about the profound conversion of one like physicist-philosopher Blaise Pascal, transported into the ecstasy of “Fire!”This 17th century scientist’s method and the scrutinizing exactitude of his calculations had little to offer the unplumbable depths of that transforming encounter. Likewise, Pascal’s later theological musings—try as they might—could not replace the methods that had informed his geometry.
Science and religion, empiricism and phenomenology, object and subject, many and one, possess extraordinarily distinct domains, yet remain inseparable and interconnected vessels of integral wisdom, shining their collaborative potency on the world through their unique illuminations. They each promise, in their distinct yet interwoven rays of light, emergence of the one-yet-many world of universal intersubjectivity and interobjectivity. Philosophy, science, religion, spirituality, culture or complexity: none can claim time—or anything else—entirely for itself.
Neville Ann Kelly <nevkel@gmail.com>
Mount Marty College, Yankton, SD
7. Comment from Oswald. And on Progress & Providence
I embrace your point, Neville—that “Philosophy, science, religion, spirituality, culture or complexity: none can claim time—or anything else—entirely for itself.” A present challenge is to have philosophers, scientists, theologians, priests, mystics, begin to accept their interconnectedness and develop discourse and enable continuing illumination wherein all can benefit.
As a theologian I am constantly taken aback the profound impact science has had—and continues to have—on our culture and thought. The employment of the scientific method, and the products this method has reaped—from computers to space ships, from communication devices to medical treatments—has fascinated and attracted individuals the world over. Yet I feel that this fascination—as a bug to a flame—is its own distraction, and can cause us to lose perspective on the larger questions those human experiences beg. As Pierre suggests at the beginning of this discussion, there can be some tensions between Progress and Providence. Many can get caught up the in the Progress that scientific inquiry and discovery can bring, marginalizing Providence only because of fixation on inquiry/discovery.
If we can broaden our understanding of Providence to that of the mystics—an embrace of mystery that draws us ever forward—an understanding that confessional churches suggest but are hesitant to embrace, then we can begin to experience the scientific method as partner to the mystery that draws us forward to continuing intimacy and understanding.
Living in Texas—where continuing skirmishes and divisions surface along the lines of evolution versus creationism—any type of deference to science having any kind of truth claim can be seen as the height of arrogance or deviltry. Actually, this has been an ongoing question in some quarters since 18th century Europe, when the disciplines of religion and science were much farther apart than they are now. It seems to me that all experts in their respective fields would do well to recall the occasion that gave rise to their discipline and bring into focus the questions raised by the methods they employ. Through this, their interconnectedness will be revealed.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his popular “The Great Partnership—Science, Religion and the Search for Meaning” presents a helpful and insightful discussion on the complementarity of religions and science. At the risk of being simplistic—It’s not either/or Progress or Providence. It’s both.
Oswald John Nira <onira@lake.ollusa.edu>
Our Lady of the Lake University
San Antonio, TX 78207
8. On methods: Lonergan and Ricoeur
In searching for an appropriate method for our times there are two giants who have charted a path: the Catholic philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan and the Protestant philosopher Paul Ricoeur.
The transcendental Thomist Lonergan opted for intersubjectivity as his staring point and appealed to the scientific method. His approach appeals to those tilted towards a scientific reading of reality. The weakness of his method is the danger of being trapped in subjectivity, although he does remedy this with his appeal to creativity and loving action.
Paul Ricoeur, on the other hand, is more phenomenologist that transcendentalist, more hermeneutitian than explicator. He starting point was existentialism and history and he appealed to poetics, story, texts, and myths for understanding truth claims. The weakness of his approach is the danger of being trapped in closed circularity of hermeneutics. Yet he sought to ensure the development of knowledge through a concern for creative meaning and engaged reflection. Ricoeur appeals to those who abide in readings of reality that fall outside the scientific method.
These are two very different approaches to arriving at truth claims, whether these claims are in the fields of religion or science. When contested truth claims arise it can be useful to understand the epistemological route which the person took to arrive at the claim. From my perspective, Ricoeur’s concern for the ‘who’ speaking overrides Lonergan’s concern for the cognition undergone on route to truth. This bias is based on my concern for the person speaking and for the community to which, and for which, they speak. Statements of scientific or religious ‘truths’ are then more easily received by me, the hearer, when I understand the path the speaker trod. This approach does not necessarily resolve the often-contentious relationship between religion and science but does provide a way for me to live with both in openness and serenity.
Michael Dallaire <michael@michaeldallaire.com>
Vancouver, BC. Canada
9. Overcoming the science-theology divide
If theology is an effort to render understandable and reasonable the Christian faith, we cannot avoid contact with contemporary science. In the last decades theology has overwhelmingly tried to avoid this contact, and to keep fictitious boundaries that could separate both realms and divide the roles: science would deal with penultimate things; theology with ultimate ones. This strategy has not worked, and nowadays there are many theologians who are unable to answer the main questions science raises in the minds of educated people. Catholic Theology should overcome its traditional ‘laziness’ and try to build a theology that accounts for scientific development, and be able to find a place in a world that is cognitively informed by science.
The European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT) is a scholarly association of theologians and scientists, believers and no-believers. We try to overcome the boundaries that have restricted for a long time the access to the ‘other side.’ ESSSAT publishes a quarterly ESSSAT News & Reviews, which is a bibliographic bulletin about recent developments in science and theology. An extensive article review, many book-reviews, and a comprehensive list of recent related titles, provides useful information and guide in the field.
The next meeting will take place in Assisi (Italy) in May 2014 on the topic is "Do emotions shape the world? Perspectives from Science and Theology". More information see our web page: www.esssat.org
Lluis Oviedo <loviedo@antonianum.eu>
Pontificia Universita Antonianum
00185 Roma -Italia
10. Concluding comments
For lack of time, these comments will be brief but not for that reason dismissive of the views expressed.
First of all, Ed Miller’s advocacy of the continued use of primary and secondary causality to explain how God and the world of creation, especially human beings, interact with one another doesn’t work for me because, to use Ed’s own example, the violin is an instrument in the hands of a violinist. The violin is not another subject of experience whose voluntary cooperation in producing the right sound is crucial to making it happen. So for me primary and secondary causality in the classical sense is not grounded in the simultaneous mutual causality of inter-subjectivity but in the unilateral causality of the primary cause.
Neville Ann Kelly’s comment that the philosophy of science doesn’t have time to itself is interesting. For me, there are two ways to measure the passage of time: objectively or subjectively. Objectively, time moves out of the past into the present and thence into the future. The hands on a clock testify to this kind of time which is used in scientific research. Subjectively, time moves out of the future as possibility into the present moment of decision as to whether or not to actualize that possibility and eventually into the past as the history of past decisions still affecting the present. Both are experientially valid; so both are necessary for the full understanding of the time-systems governing our world. As a process-oriented thinker, I believe that subjective time is primary and objective time is more a convention to bring different time-systems into coordination. But that would require too much further commentary.
Oswald John Nira’s comment about the relation between Progress and Providence is also interesting. Providence implies ongoing care for someone or something else than oneself, but clearly Providence can be present whether the person or thing being cared for is moving toward some predetermined goal or simply keeping things together as far as possible. In other words, the process of ongoing Divine Providence implies change but not necessarily progress, as many philosophers of science like Michael Ruse believe about evolution.
I agree with Lluis Oviedo that theologians to their misfortune are not staying abreast of developments in the natural and social sciences. For Protestants, this is often justified by a strictly literal reading of Scripture; for Catholics, it is justified by belief in Thomism as the philosophia perennis. Either way, Christians well trained in a scientific discipline will be skeptical of the continuing validity of these approaches to reality without significant qualification
Michael Dellaire and Jay Feierman both deal with the issue of objective truth. Speaking for myself, I can only say that for me objective truth is an ideal to be aimed at, not an impartial description of the way things are. Every truth-claim is perspectival and has to be compared and contrasted with the truth claims of others seeking the truth on a given issue. Scientists recognize this and present their theories as subject to empirical verification by others. Many philosophers and theologians unfortunately do not recognize the perspectival character of truth-claims and thus implicitly absolutize their own truth-claims. Admittedly, scientists have the advantage of proposing theories that admit of empirical verification, whereas such empirical verification is impossible for many of the truth-claims to be found in philosophy and theology. On the other hand, scientists can be lured into the false security of thinking that empirical verification in the form of mathematical measurement of results is the touchstone for acceptance or non-acceptance of a truth-claim or belief. Most of the truths that govern our decisions in life are not mathematically measureable. The truths undergirding inter-subjective relations, for example, are intuitively based, not based on an algorithm. At least, so it seems to me.
Joseph Bracken <bracken@xavier.edu>
Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio 45207
11. Cognitive linguistics as third strategy
A third strategy for overcoming the stalemate to which Joe Bracken refers is to explore what cognitive linguistics can teach us about how understanding develops in religions and sciences and about how these different ways of understanding interrelate. I explore this in a book that is coming out soon from Peeters Press, Without Metaphor, No Saving God: Theology after Cognitive Linguistics.
Cognitive linguistics is an interdisciplinary study that for the last thirty years has investigated the implications of the cognitive sciences about neural mapping for understanding the mechanics of language and thought. The research includes, for example, George Lakoff’s work on categorization, his investigations with Mark Johnson of metaphorical conceptualization, and Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s examination of conceptual blending theory. This work on conceptual mapping provides a more robust account of conceptualization that raises serious questions from a scientific perspective about distinctions often made between objective and subjective reasoning. All conceptualization and inference entail complex conceptual mappings that can be analyzed and evaluated more precisely and rigorously. This research offers a significant advance over the standard accounts of the role that is played in religion and science by metaphor, analogy, and symbol.
Often we, scientists and theologians, do not pay adequate attention to the actual mechanics of our complex conceptual mappings and to how these fuel the emergence of new understandings that tectonically shift our conceptual frameworks. Careful attention, for example, to the different conceptual mappings presumed by the so-called "new atheists" and by theologians, explains why it seems so obvious to the "new atheists" that belief in a Creator is unwarranted and why, at the same time, it seems equally obvious to theologians that new atheists are objecting to caricatures of God and the notion of creation from nothing.
This is not the forum for me to argue the case, but I did want to draw attention to another way of tackling the issue.
Robert Masson <robert.masson@marquette.edu>
Marquette University
Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881
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