Danny Rich wrote in the Guardian in an article in summer 2008.
Really?
The prospect of religion and science working together is one to fill any rational person with dread.
All too often the proponents of each in their various guises have poured scorn on the veracity of the other whilst proclaiming their own self-declared truths to be sacroscant and beyond debate or criticism. In the name of these, crusades and jihads have been waged, atomic bombs invented and the basic patterns of life broken down, copyrighted and reassembled. And equally in the case of each, doubters and non-believers have been excoriated and excommunicated rather than valued, listened to and reassured.
I do generalise - there are many open-minded scientists and religious believers ready to embrace others' points and revisit their own views. Yet at root, both science and revealed religion have an unhappy tendency to identify absolutes and denounce as heresy any who question these (and in the case of religion especially, how can a genuine belief in divine revelation lead to anything else?).
Intolerance and a supercilious disregard of other viewpoints result from such moral certainties. All too often scientists claim almost any act of experimentation is valid in the search for "Truth", much as the more zealous religious believer will claim to know the "Truth" as revealed to them directly or indirectly by their interpretation of God.
How does this play in the debate on climate change?
I believe that science and religion have driven us to this scenario: an over-populated planet whose ecosystems are now in collapse and the vast majority of whose human inhabitants live in rapidly growing misery. Religion as allegedly revealed to the bulk of humanity through the prophets of the three Abrahamic religions has assured us arrogantly of our mastery over the planet and its resources and science has combined with it in a (literally) unholy alliance to exploit these to exhaustion.
Whilst welcoming the scientific consensus on climate change, I note that scientists have been johnny-come-latelys set against the oft-derided environmentalist movement. How well equipped then are scientists to find a "scientific solution"? Proferred solutions to date, such as "carbon-capture", may simply encourage many to continue our wasteful existences with little change. And more recently, science's major contribution to solving the crisis - biofuels - has actually aggravated the problem significantly. Increasingly, it is shifting its focus to GM and the potential miracles ascribed to the artificial manipulation of genetics to produce superfoods and other organic compounds allegedly to serve humanity - although the profits for multinationals such as Monsanto in putting fish genes into fruit to make it look more colourful or in creating non-self-replenishing "terminator seeds" to chain agriculture into dependence on manufactured seeds will doubtless be welcomed.
Equally, Judaism, Christianity and Islam in their fundamental forms often compound the dangers with apocalyptic prophecy welcoming the end of the world and encouraging a fatalistic continuation of free market economics until the moment of Rapture or Judgement. American evangelicals often embrace climate change as a sign of prophetic fulfillment than a cause for concern or action.
If there is hope, it has to be found in political and moral action around reason: reason in understanding that we are not gods and must learn to live with Nature rather than to think for a moment that we can tame it; and in understanding that we are part of the natural world and that this wonderful, precious habitat is greater than any of us individually and indeed of our entire species.
In this scenario, science becomes the servant of Nature, studying and comprehending but in doing so accepting it is not in our capacity or right to fundamentally alter it. And religion, rather than being the vehicle for salving or sanctifying our greed and claiming our superiority over Nature, becomes instead a means of accepting and welcoming our role in Creation alongside rather than superior to the rest of this wonderful Universe, given by a Deity perhaps, but one which truly does and always will pass our understanding -"for we too are stardust".
This would be a step change in how these two aspects of human society function, fusing them in accepting our species' fundamentally ephemeral and transient part in the fabric of things rather than as now where, in their different ways, each seeks to transcend Nature and in so doing put everything, including our own survival, at risk.
This may be a bitter pill to swallow given millenia of humanity believing that we are in Dominion over Creation and that we can become even better through exploiting it as a God-given right, but it is an essential one.
In the original, deeply satirical version of "Planet of the Apes", the stranded astronaut Taylor, observes wryly that his main adversary, Dr Zaius, holds the post of "Minister of Science and Religion" which, he suggests, would be better rendered as "Guardian of the Terrible Secret." - which was that the simian society in the film had come from humble origins it could not bear to countenance. I won't spoil the outcome of the storyline for anyone who has not seen the film and its first sequel, but there is a lesson to be drawn for proponents as diverse as Dawkins and the Pope, which is that humans of whatever creed need to divest themselves of their arrogance before the planet divests itself of us.
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| Dr Zaius, Minister of Science & Religion |
