Some claim that science and religion have no need to fight because they occupy Non-Overlapping MAgisteria (NOMA, coined I believe by Steven Jay Gould). Science, it is argued, concerns itself with the natural, and religion with the supernatural. By definition, science cannot study the supernatural, and religion has no interest in interfering with the merely natural, therefore they can live side by side in mutual respect and harmony. So why are creationists continuing to fight against evolutionists? Why is the school system perceived as a battleground over our children's very minds?
If (as I'm sure at least one bumper sticker says) "God is the answer", then what are the questions? Religions attempt to answer questions such as where did we come from, how did nature come to be what it is, what is the basis for morality, and what exactly is that inner sense of "me". The "God" hypothesis makes sense, if you live in a pre-scientific society in which you don't have the means to determine a better answer. "God did it" answers the creation questions, "God says so" answers the morality questions, and "We are a bit like God - we have a spirit, a soul, that sort of lives in our brain" answers questions about the nature of perception. However, it is these same momentous questions which also drive scientific inquiry. Religions, in other words, are early attempts to answer precisely the same questions that science is also trying to answer. Religions aren't about God per se, they're about finding out about ourselves.
This is why I think that the magisteria of religion and science not only overlap, but are identical. The confusion comes when one insists that religions are "about" the supernatural, and science is "about" the natural. For example, Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, said in an essay in the September/October 2001 issue of Skeptical Enquirer magazine, "If science is a procedure attempting to explain the natural world through natural processes (methodological materialism) there is thus a pretty bright line between religion and science." No more so, I think, than the line between, say, the theory of N rays and science, or cold fusion and science.
What, then, is the difference between religion and science? Let's presume, for the sake of argument, that God exists, that It intervenes in nature, that souls really do exist, that there may really be an afterlife. If this were the case we should be able to discover the soul-brain interface. We ought to be able to catch God at it, manipulating matter or energy. We should be able to detect souls. (If souls do not interact at some level with the natural world, there can be no soul-brain interface, and it ceases to be meaningful to have a soul at all, if it doesn't know who it is, and remembers nothing). Science does not confine itself arbitrarily to some subset of phenomena. If it exists and interacts with us, we should be able to detect it. It is less and less likely that there exist natural phenomena beyond our power to create detectors to detect. We know how to make better eyes than our eyes, better ears than our ears. Spiritology would be a legitimate scientific enterprise.
Looking at the other side, let's posit the existence of a religion which has as its only tenet "N rays exist". Without some evidence to support it, OR without any pressing reason for transmitting the tenet to others, this religion would die. Now let's say that it has as its only tenet "Cold fusion works". Since cold fusion would be such a great boon to society IF it were true, there are good reasons for passing this one along, encouraging research, etc., despite the paucity of hard evidence. This religion, even given no forthcoming evidence, may yet survive. If its tenets become rigorously proven, it ceases even to be called religion! It gets called "science".
Now look at the package you get with most established religions. You get everlasting life in some form (such as reincarnation, ascent to heaven, or physical immortality in a terrestrial paradise). You get your revenge fantasies fulfilled because you are assured that those who have wronged you will eventually suffer for it. You get a morality Full Meal Deal, which means you don't have to waste time agonizing over how to behave. These are almost irresistible ideas and, if true, are worth passing on. The absence of evidence is not sufficient to kill them because their attractiveness works to propagate them irrespective of their intrinsic worth.
It is true that some scientific ideas propagate not only because they work but because people derive some satisfaction from knowing them and passing them on. However, those ideas are generally satisfying because of, not despite, the evidence fitting beautifully. In contrast, religions are scientific hypotheses for which the evidence is lacking, but which have a built-in mechanism for being passed on anyway. To put it even more strongly, religions are contagious mental illnesses. In the same way as some parasites1 or drugs2, they trick the victim into believing that they provide some benefit. They spread because they are good at spreading, and for no other reason.
I'm not saying, as some cultural relativists might, that science is just another religion; there are good reasons for thinking that science holds a privileged epistemological position. I am saying that religion is bad science. It is the promotion of hypotheses as fact without hard evidence, without peer review, and without impartiality on the part of those promoting them. Creationists know all too well that good science is antithetical to them. The scientific method poses just as much of a threat to creationism as it did to N rays, and would gently put creationism in the dustbin of history were it not for its adherents' perfervid conviction that belief sans evidence is virtuous. Without evidence, faith is all they have left.
Steve Hansen Smythe, September 2002
1 e.g. rhizocephalans, relatives of barnacles, which trick crabs into caring for the rhizocephalan's egg sac instead of the crab's own. They even trick male crabs into acting like females to get the correct nurturing behaviour. Admittedly an obscure example, but one of my favourites, taken from Steven Jay Gould's brilliant essay, The Triumph of the Root-Heads.
2 e.g. nicotine, which tricks the body into believing that the body needs it.