Thought for the week - 28 April 2008

The Quest for Truth

I can’t help but feel that more heat has been generated than light by all of the recent ‘debate’ about so-called human/animal embryos.  The issues are far from simple ones, and there is much that can be said from a Christian standpoint in favour of this research (although that doesn’t seem to have made the news).  One sort of knowledge (religious, spiritual) needs to take proper account of another sort (scientific, evidential, mathematical). The popular notion often seems to be that the one (science) has ‘disproved’ the other (religion) – which is a complete misrepresentation of what each is about, and completely untrue.

If science is a quest for truth then it should be a friend rather than an enemy, because religious faith is also a quest for truth. In fact, we might say that all searching for truth is a searching for God because God is ultimate truth. The scientific quest is actually a search for God – at least, that’s how I would put it as a religious person. So it follows that discoveries in science need to be clearly understood and taken on board by people of faith. Some discoveries may challenge or overturn ideas that we believed once but now find to be mistaken. Religion needs, without fear, to accept that new understanding sets us free from past mistakes, and that this may sometimes call upon us to revise what we say about religion. (The belief that the world was the centre of the universe was used at one time as a way of speaking about the centrality of humanity to God’s creative purpose. We now see that the world is not the centre of the universe, and have had to develop a different way of talking about creation and the place of humanity in it. Religion isn’t ‘disproved’ by this; it is called to express faith in the light of better knowledge, which is a gain.)

Einstein said, ‘Religion without science is blind; science without religion is lame’.  So this isn’t just a one-way street; religion has vital things to say about value, meaning and purpose which scientists need to take on board.  If we will work together the mature mind of humanity can find the most properly human way forwards when new science raises moral dilemmas.  But each needs to listen more carefully to the other, to understand more fully what the other is actually saying, and not to leave the public debate to often less than well-informed representatives.  There are people doing that quietly right now, and we await their mature wisdom with hope and confidence that it will help us all see better where God is leading us all in the 21st century.

Chris Pullin

Vicar St John-in-Bedwardine, Worcester