Consonances Between Science and Religion
In the God,
Humanity and the Cosmos project we have adopted what van Huyssteen refers
to as ‘a weak form of critical realism’ (see critical realism in science and religion). Addressing reality is the goal
of the rational explorations of sciences and religions, but thinkers’ confidence as to which elements of their
models do refer to real entities will vary across a discipline and over time.
To use the metaphor of the maps, our underlying conviction is still that both
science and theology are maps of the same
world. We might therefore expect that ‘following the coastlines’, as Mary
Midgley suggests might
enable us to see ‘consonances’ - places where the descriptions of reality
offered by the two types of mapping seem to show a particularly close relation,
when they (to change the metaphor) ‘chime together’. For Ernan McMullin the
Christian ‘must strive to make his
theology and his ... cosmology consonant in the contributions they make to
(this) world-view.’
At once this notion sounds certain
‘warning-bells’, as follows:
i) If science fails to ‘show us God’ by
matching a piece of coastline with that drawn by theology, or if a piece of
science we took for a sign of God loses its apparent consonance (for an
important example see theological
responses to quantum cosmology) does that make God non-existent, or less
probable?
ii) the claims made by sciences and
religions must both be recognised as a function of their cultural contexts, as
being in some sense ‘constructed’ by those contexts. So as Drees has
emphasised, consonances are also constructs.
John Polkinghorne has also discussed
consonance. He is clear
that the position is complex in respect of Big
Bang cosmology (see Big Bang cosmology
and theology). He finds a more rewarding consonance in respect of the physical
world being shaped by an interplay between chance and physical law (see law and
chance). Concerning eschatology there seems to be no consonance - scientific
cosmology predicts that the universe will end in a state devoid of structure or
meaning; Christianity cherishes a final hope of redemption. R.J.Russell calls
this an example of dissonance.
In our view Ted Peters has assessed the
situation correctly when he writes: ‘“Consonance” in the strong sense means accord,
harmony. Accord or harmony might be a treasure we hope to find, but we have not
found it yet. Where we find ourselves now is working with consonance in a weak
sense - that is - by identifying common domains of question-asking.’
Indeed even if we find from time to time
glints of the ‘treasure’ we may not be able to glimpse them for long, since
both the sciences and theology move on. Even McMullin, an early proponent of
consonance, recognised that it would be ‘in constant slight shift.’
What consonance often seems to mean in
practice is that theology is asked to redraw its map in order to fit its
coastlines to new scientific understandings.The scientific map-makers seem to be the powerful ones now. But see religion
and the rise of science.
Email
link | Feedback | Contributed by: Dr. Christopher Southgate
Source: God, Humanity and the Cosmos (T&T Clark, 1999)
|
