(Ir)religiosity

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One of the unfortunate side effects of so-called “new” atheism (besides general intransigent arrogance and a lack of intellectual honesty) has been further (false) dichotomization of science and religion and rigid entrenchment into the reductionistic foxholes of scientism and religious fundamentalism.  Positivistic intellectuals like ‘Ditchkins’ and your run-of-the-mill, garden-variety Christianists like, say, Ken Ham or Carl Wieland are ready to hedge their bets on the misguided and myopic supposition that the discourses of science and religion fundamentally and foundationally incompatible.  The irony in all this is that both camps are both partially correct yet completely wrong in asserting complete epistemological superiority.  The similarities of the new atheists and religious fundamentalists has been well documented.  I don’t want to rehash that position except to take note of the core assertion:  that when it comes to matters of exclusivity, intolerance, and arrogance new atheism and religious fundamentalism more similar than they are different, functioning as mirror images of the core logic, shadow-boxers or ships passing in the night, one might say.  Which is why the vitriolic arguments are, at times, just as entertaining as they are tiresome.

This brings me to Jon Stewart’s great interview with Marilynne Robinson last night on The Daily Show promoting her new book Absence of Mind. See the video below after the jump:

The thrust of Robinson’s book is to refute the increasingly pervasive claim that science and religion preclude one another for the sake of, as she puts it in the interview, “good atheism and good religion.”  At one point, several minutes into the conversation, Stewart makes an observation that I think strikes to the root of the matter.  ”I’ve always been fascinated,” says Stewart, “that the more you delve into science, the more it appears to rely on faith.”  He goes on to say that he struck by “the similarity of [the arguments of science and religion] at their core.”  Exactly.  And that is precisely the observation that Ditckins and others — it seems there plenty of them judging by the number of negative comments on the interview video — are afraid of.  And, to be honest, if I were them I would be too, given that the examples of faith they look to are often the most extreme and cartoonish examples out there.  But the point — and this what Robinson is trying to show — is that the presence of faith in science (and religion) is not a mark of denigration but rather an acknowledgement of finitude.  We need the best from both disciplines in order to arrive at the best understanding of the nature of ultimate reality and until there is mutual acknowledgement of the presence and function of faith in both discourses, both will continue to assume their own caricature and fight with the other.

Jack Caputo makes a similar claim vis-a-vis philosophy and theology, another cumbersome modern duality.  In late modernity, as in the Enlightenment, Reason functions as its own causa sui, a sort of neutral and transcendental arbiter of what can be said to be true, the judge, jury, and executioner of reality.  This is what has enabled science and other discourses to assert the epistemological high ground over and against religion and theology (vice versa).  But the problem we are presented with from Kant onward is that reason itself relies upon a certain amount of faith!   The line between faith and reason is not as clear demarcated as we may have thought.  Caputo puts it this way in his wonderful little book Philosophy and Theology, each time time he says “philosophy” think “science” alongside it.

In the classical distinction between reason and faith, which has always lain at the root of the negotiations between philosophy and theology, each bargaining from what it took to be its position of strength, the assumption is that reason is a kind of seeing, seeing clearly, and faith is a kind of not seeing, of seeing in part and through a glass darkly, as Saint Paul said. [...] [T]he upshot of the shift effected by the [postmodern] turn is to introduce the idea of seeing as, which functions like something of a third term that tends to break the log jam in those negotiations and to make the the distinction between the two even more porous.  ”Seeing as” weakens the idea of “pure seeing”  defended in the camp of reason and strengthens the idea of “seeing in part” defended in the camp of faith. [...] However we end up describing reason (and therefore science and philosophy), we will have to concede that it is not seeing all the way down, that it involves an ongoing faith and truest in it ensemble of assumptions and presuppositions…. [...] So seeing is starting to look something like believing.  By the same token, to have faith in something is not darkness and not-seeing all the way down.  On the contrary, one will not be able to see at all without a certain faith, if we do not have a take, an “as,” an angle, a perspective, a vocabulary that we believe and trust.  To believe it to take something “as,” and to proceed with some confidence in our perspective, in order that we may see and understand. [...] The distinction between philosophy and theology is not…the distinction between faith and reason, where reason sees and faith does not quite see.  Rather, the distinction between philosophy and theology is drawn between two kinds of faith, by which I mean two kinds of “seeing as.” [...] The distinction between philosophy and theology is between two kinds of interpretive slants, two kinds of interpretations that are inwardly structured by the sort of faith at work in each.  Faith, on this account, turns out to have a stronger hand to play…for faith is an elemental form of human life, a basic ingredient in our existence, as necessary as the air we breathe, and it proves to be an indispensable requirement for philosophy as well as for theology.¹

In light of this, my contention would that science and religion are both faith-laden exigential discourses.  Indeed, faith is irreducible to the architecture of both discourses insofar as faith is intrinsic to human existence.  This means that science and religion are not incompatible but they are, in some sense, incommensurable since they operate on the basis of different forms of faith and desire.² To my mind this does not preclude mutual interaction or dialogue, it simply adopts a posture of epistemic humility in hopes of drawing upon the insight of the wider spectrum of human thought and experience rather than a singular self-establishing discourse which asserts superiority and hegemony.

This is why interdisciplinary work is so important, because it fosters this sort interaction and mitigates against esoteric myopia.  It is also why I continue to maintain that however fashionable it may be in certain quarters of the academy, the turn to the postmodern is imperative and is far from running its course.  The religion-science debate is the perfect case in point.  For nowhere do we see the presence of the cold grip of modernity than in the proponents of scientism and religious fundamentalism.  What we need are good scientists and good theologians/philosophers who, acknowledging their own limitations and reliance on a certain kind of faith, are willing to enter into a space of collaboration and dialogue on questions of mutual interest and concern.

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1. John D. Caputo, Philosophy and Theology, 55-59. [↩]
2. I will leave to persons much more qualified than myself the problem of which questions each discipline is purporting to address (e.g., whether religion asks the “why” questions while science asks the “how” questions, etc.). [↩]