TruthBook Religious News Blog

Nearly half of Americans still dispute the indisputable: that humans evolved to our current form over millions of years. We’re scientists and Christians. Our message to the faithful: Fear not.

By Karl Giberson and Darrel Falk

The "conflict" between science and religion in America today is not only unfortunate, but unnecessary.

We are scientists, grateful for the freedom to earn Ph.D.s and become members of the scientific community. And we are religious believers, grateful for the freedom to celebrate our religion, without censorship. Like most scientists who believe in God, we find no contradiction between the scientific understanding of the world, and the belief that God created that world. And that includes Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Many of our fellow Americans, however, don't quite see it this way, and this is where the real conflict seems to rest.

Almost everyone in the scientific community, including its many religious believers, now accepts that life has evolved over the past 4 billion years. The concept unifies the entire science of biology. Evolution is as well-established within biology as heliocentricity is established within astronomy. So you would think that everyone would accept it. Alas, a 2008 Gallup Poll showed that 44% of Americans reject evolution, believing instead that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years."

The "science" undergirding this "young earth creationism" comes from a narrow, literalistic and relatively recent interpretation of Genesis, the first book in the Bible. This "science" is on display in the Creation Museum in Kentucky, where friendly dinosaurs — one with a saddle! — cavort with humans in the Garden of Eden. Every week these ideas spread from pulpits and Sunday School classrooms across America. On weekdays, creationism is taught in fundamentalist Christian high schools and colleges. Science faculty at schools such as Bryan College in Tennessee and Liberty University in Virginia work on "models" to shoehorn the 15 billion year history of the universe into the past 10,000 years.

Evolution continues to disturb, threatening the faith of many in a deeply religious America, especially those who read the Bible as a scientific text. But it does not have to be this way.

Paradoxical challenges

Such challenges to evolutionary science are paradoxical. Challenging accepted ideas is how America churns out Nobel Prize-winning science and patents that will drive tomorrow's technology. But challenging authority can also undermine this country's leadership in science, when citizens reject it.

Darwin proposed the theory of evolution in 1859 in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. This controversial text presented evidence that present-day life forms have descended from common ancestors via natural selection. Organisms better adapted to their environments had more offspring, and these fitness adaptations accumulated across the millennia. And this is how new species arose.

In 1859 the evidence convinced many people, but not without challenges. Paleontology, the study of fossils, was new; no reliable way existed to determine the age of the Earth, and the physicists said it was too young to accommodate evolution; and Darwin knew nothing of genes, so the mechanism of inheritance — central to his theory — was shrouded in mystery.

But the biggest problem was dismay that humans were related to primates: "Descended from the apes? Dear me, let us hope it is not true," allegedly exclaimed the wife of a 19th-century English bishop upon hearing of Darwin's new theory. "But if it is true, let us hope it does not become widely known."

This is an interesting op-ed piece regarding a belief in evolution and a belief in God being able to co-exist - it is written by two scientists who also happen to be "religious believers." Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: Charles Darwin, conflict, Darrel Falk, evolution, faith, Karl Giberson, religion, science

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Friday, August 08, 2008

Managing Religious Conflicts

One-third of employers have seen clashes in the workplace about religion, and experts expect that number to rise. Training managers on ways to mediate conflicts as well as educating employees and supervisors on the issue is important.

By Kristen B. Frasch

Personal clashes about religion are not that uncommon in the workplace. Yet, most organizations do not have a policy addressing the issue.

That's according to a recent study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), which found that one-third of 278 employers surveyed worldwide have seen worker conflicts in the workplace linked to religion.

And even though personal friction over religious beliefs is not all that uncommon, nearly two-thirds of those companies say they do not have a written policy specifically addressing religious bias.

At the same time, it seems clear many organizations are still unsure about how to handle religious differences at work, researchers say.

According to the survey respondents, just 12 percent of companies have a written definition of what is considered to be a "religious belief."

More than half (56 percent) of the employers surveyed report they use in-house mediation to resolve religious disputes.

Other findings of the survey:

* More than half (55 percent) of surveyed companies provide flexible scheduling to allow people to attend religious services, yet only 33 percent offer paid time off for religious holidays.

* Three in 10 (31 percent) companies said that unsolicited sharing of religious views has been a problem in the workplace.

* Thirteen percent said that, because of their religious beliefs, employees have refused to do certain work or associate with certain co-workers.

* Six in 10 (61 percent) companies said they have made an accommodation for an employee, based on the worker's religious beliefs.

In 1999, a Tanenbaum survey found that 20 percent of respondents said they had been, or knew someone in their workplace who was, a victim of religious bias. Also in that survey, 66 percent of respondents said even if they were not personally affected, they saw indications of religious bias in the workplace.

Deborah Weinstein, employment law professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in Philadelphia, cautions that a larger number of respondents would be needed to translate the i4cp survey results to the entire global corporate environment. Nevertheless, she agrees the results are hardly surprising.

"Accommodating religious beliefs and practices at work, and educating workers concerning respect for differences -- not only in religion, but in cases of national origin, disability, sex, age and race, too -- is highly challenging for businesses," says Weinstein, also president of The Weinstein Firm, a Philadelphia-based workforce legal and counseling consultancy.

"Educating everyone at work about religious tolerance, especially managers, is extremely important so they know how to handle requests for accommodation or conflicts around religious differences," she says. "But this isn't the only area of diversity that cries out for increased training," she adds, also noting the increase in harassment claims arising from national origin after 9/11.

"To the extent that national origin correlates with religious differences," says Weinstein, "HR needs to be prepared to address incidents of disrespect and, more importantly, to make prevention a high priority. Training is the best way to [do this]."

Labels: conflict, Institute for Corporate Productivity, Kristen B. Frasch, religion, workplace spirituality

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Friday, September 07, 2007

The Banquet Where Science Dines with Religion

Michael Holleran

In the current debate between science and religion, Plato’s Symposium has a lot to offer. First of all, it reminds us that we should exhibit the good fellowship and enthusiasm of brothers and sisters (OK, they excluded women in those days) and of kindred explorers of the boundless marvels of the universe. Allied with this, it proposes that reality is a banquet (a frequent alternate translation of “symposium”)—unbelievably tasty and enormously filling. The image and implication of intoxication is a telling one since one can and should be inebriated and delighted by the splendor of the real, as opposed to sinking into the dour servitude of gouty dogmatism of whatever flavor.

If we adopt this stance, we discover that not just love but also truth is a “many-splendored thing.” That is a primary lesson we need to grasp before proceeding any further in the debate between science and religion. We need to stretch our minds and hearts and let them roam free outside of the narrow prisons and blinkered perspectives in which we tend to incarcerate them, and let ourselves embrace and be braced by the currents of reality around us.

So, as we enter the dining hall, let us begin by establishing our rules of etiquette, our epistemological table manners, so to speak. Those who prefer appetizers (science, let us say—no value judgment implied!) have every right to their tastes, and they may refrain from dessert, if they wish (religion, let us suppose). Others may leap right to the dessert, and skip the appetizers. Many will say, perhaps rightly, that both groups are missing out on something tasty; but, what they eat is their own decision. What we cannot allow is a discourse in which one group chastises the other as idiots or hypocrites because of their particular preference. De gustibus non disputandum. So, both science and religion beware!

What therefore might the intellectual gourmet’s assessment of these various courses, whether in the culinary or university sense? Modern civilization has discovered (despite its roots in Aristotle, who didn’t yet make all the necessary distinctions) the magnificence and the unimaginable fruitfulness of empirical science, and its mathematical models. The scientific method, based on observation, hypothesis, and experiment, has rightly brought untold benefits into our lives. It has its proper object—material and measurable reality—and its particular methods.

Similarly, religion has brought almost unfathomable depth, excitement, perspective, guidance, and compassion into the world. It, too, has its own object (God and the spirit world, and all in relation to God) and its own methods (ultimately human spiritual experience), though often employing philosophical systems or artistic means to help express the inexpressible. Of course, since notoriously fallible and fickle human beings are the ones who actually practice science or religion, much that is nasty has been introduced in the name of both (nuclear bombs and inquisitions, for example). Yet that is not a defect of the food but of the diners and their appetites—not a fault of the field itself but of those who are walking in the field.

Still, if these various fields yield wondrous crops within their own spheres, their seeds will not sprout outside of them. Science, for example, never can nor ever should speak about God. It is completely outside its realm of competence. The existence and operations of God can never be either proved or disproved by science. The experience of God, however, or discourse about God, is certainly not outside the competence of human beings, with their multilayered reality. Thus, although science cannot speak about God, a scientist may do so, if she or he wishes, only simply not as a scientist, but as a person. For the same reasons, God neither can nor should be invoked within scientific discourse, as a cause or explanation of any sort, simply because God is not an object of empirical science, and can never be proved scientifically. It does not mean that God may not be a legitimate cause on another level of discourse (philosophical, theological, or mystical). But God should not be called in to bail out or short-circuit science in its own domain.

The problems arise, of course, when there is an apparent conflict of interests, when one seems to be treading on the other’s turf. In other words, the boundaries among these various categories of discourse, or rather, our perception and understanding of them, may often be somewhat sloppy and in need of challenge. Such difficulties have arisen quite spectacularly in history on a number of occasions (Galileo and Darwin, for example, which we can explore another time in more detail). In these instances, what seemed to have been the province of religion turned out to be the province of science. Or, to express it differently, these clashes provided an enormously exhilarating opportunity for those with open minds to re-examine their understanding of certain elements of their religious belief, and grow to a maturity of appreciation that was unthinkable before. Thus, the whole reassessment, over the past 200 years, of how to read the scriptures in Christianity—not as treatises in science or history but as bearers of spiritual insight and truth—was facilitated, and to a degree, even made possible, by the scientific revolution. To be sure, as Francis Collins rightly asserts in his Discover Interview in the February issue, St. Augustine reminded his readers 1,600 years ago that our understanding of the six days of Genesis should never be slavishly literal (in fact, Origen had pointed out the same more than a century before that), or taken to be a scientific or historical eyewitness account of how events unfolded. Rather are we dealing with a mythical and mystical treatise whose depth of truth is vastly more challenging and astonishing as a metaphor of our spiritual journey than just as an account, however glorious and poetic, of the origins of our material universe. Immense and innumerable currents of Jewish and Christian mystical writing bear this out. And, as the Dalai Lama has famously said in recent years, if other beliefs of religion were to be challenged by science, then, upon examination, we would have to humbly integrate the insights, certain that religion itself would only profit in the end.

Historically speaking, however, we know that proponents neither of religion nor of science often exhibited this tranquil breadth of spirit, this self-possessed openness to challenge and change, that circumstances genuinely required. Indeed, official positions and widespread popular understanding were often rife with fear and its concomitant dogmatism, and this remains so today in many quarters. Once again, however, this is the fault of the practitioners, and not of science or of religion itself.

Another possible area of conflict, which is considerably more contentious, is that of morality. I would propose that scientific research is intrinsically amoral; by its own rules, science would simply go out and do whatever it is capable of doing at any time. This is a limitation, but not a fault. Problems arise, however, because its object is often part of a much more complex reality. For example, not only do people do science, but people are often the object of science. What is more, they are not simply the subjects and objects of science, they are also the subjects and objects of psychology, art, ethics, philosophy, theology, and mysticism. Hence, these other levels of exploration and discourse have the right not to do science but to challenge the scientist, when a value known and embraced at another level is threatened by a science that is fundamentally without values. This is obviously the case in the life sciences: biotechnology, biochemistry, etc. Even if cloning, stem cell research, and reproductive advances represent scientific progress, are they truly and necessarily progress for the totality of the human person and for life in society? These are crucial questions that have to be faced out of respect for the complexity of our human and epistemological reality. But likewise, there must be caution on the other end of the spectrum: Are we so sure about our ethical and spiritual understanding of the human person that we would be justified in imposing limits on science in such and such a case? Humility and circumspection are needed on both sides.

Perhaps what is best in our humanity is what can likewise help reconcile science and religion in practice: the sense of wonder, of openness, of exploration, the exhilarating intoxication that I mentioned above. These sentiments are the inspiration, both Maritain and I would argue, for both science and religion—indeed for any passionate pursuit. Grounded in this sort of breadth of spirit, which is secure, serene, and confident in itself, we can hopefully learn— whether in science or in religion or in any human endeavor—not only to tolerate but to glory in the experience of not knowing. The feverish demand for instant certitude seems a Western neurosis. After all, whether we consider ourselves loyal scientists or loyal members of a religious tradition or both, an awestruck sense of respect before the unknown is the only loyal attitude towards whatever reality is the object of our exploration. As Maritain pointed out, there is more mystery in a grape between the teeth than in all of our discourses that would attempt to explain it. So, may we avoid anorexia of the spirit, and let the “banquet” continue!

Labels: conflict, Michael Holleran, morality, Plato’s Symposium, religion, science

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Thursday, May 03, 2007

Children Benefit From Religious Parents

May 2, 2007

Children raised by religious parents have better self-control, social skills and approaches to learning than children in non-religious families, U.S. researchers have discovered.

But as LiveScience reported, these benefits did not show up when religious parents argued frequently over their faith in front of their children.

The study was carried out by John Bartkowski, a sociologist at Mississippi State University, based on a survey of the parents and teachers of more than 16,000 children, most of whom were in Grade 1.

Bartkowski and his colleagues compared how the respondents rated the children’s behaviour patterns with how frequently their parents said they attended worship services, talked about religion with their child and argued about religion in the home.

One reason that a religious home environment can be good for children, Bartkowski told LiveScience, is because religious organizations tend to regard parenting with sacred meaning and significance.

University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox, though not involved in the study, agreed, claiming that for most religious parents, "getting their kids into heaven is more important than getting their kids into Harvard."

On the other hand, said Bartkowski, "Religion can hurt if faith is a source of conflict or tension in the family."

The study did not compare the degree of impact of different religions and denominations on children.

The study will be published in the academic journal Social Science Research.

Labels: children, conflict, faith, John Bartkowski, parents, religion