National Public Radio in the U.S. continues its osculation of faith with a new article by Marcelo Gleiser on its “Cosmos and Culture site, “Science doesn’t want to take God away from you.” The title startled me, for “science” doesn’t “want” to do anything, except, perhaps, to discover what’s true about the universe. Of course people may react to those truths by abandoning God, but is that science’s aim, or fault?

It turns out that Gleiser was being interviewed in Brasilia about his new book, which apparently did affect someone’s faith:

The interviewer asked me questions about the scientific take on the end of the world, inspired by a book I had just published (The Prophet and the Astronomer: Apocalyptic Science and the End of the World). There are many ways in which science can address this question. We can see, from the devastating effects of Typhoon Haiyan, that the forces of nature are beyond our control, even if we pride ourselves on “taming” the world around us.

But the focus of my book was on cataclysmic celestial events and how they have inspired both religious narratives and scientific research, past and present. In particular, note the many instances that stars and fire and brimstone fall from the sky in the Bible, both in the Old (e.g., Book of Daniel, Sodom and Gomorrah) and the New Testament (e.g., Apocalypse of John), or how the Celts believed that the skies would fall on their heads to mark the end of a time cycle.

That doesn’t sound too malevolent, but the interview was conducted in the local bus station, and one local was disturbed:

It was then that the hand went up. A small man with torn clothes and grease stains on his face asked: “So the doctor wants to take even God away from us?”

I froze. The despair in that man’s voice was apparent. He felt betrayed. His faith was the only thing he held on to, the only thing that gave him strength to come back to that bus station every day to work for a humiliatingly low minimum wage.

If I took God away and put in its place the rational argumentation of science, with its empirical validation, what would that even mean to this man? How would it help him go on with his life? How could science teach him to cope with life in a world without the magic of supernatural belief?

I realized then how far scientists are from the needs of most people; how far removed our discourse is from those who do not already seek science for answers, as surely most of you reading this essay already do. . . I also realized how completely futile it was to stand up there and proudly proclaim the value and wonder of science to someone whose faith is the main drive behind all that he or she does.

. . I also realized how completely futile it was to stand up there and proudly proclaim the value and wonder of science to someone whose faith is the main drive behind all that he or she does.

Well, science certainly meets many of the “needs” of people: giving them longer lives, better medical care, improved sanitation, technical advances, and so on, but Geiser is talking about “spiritual needs.” His “solution”, as he implies, is a bit lame:

We must fill [science] education with the wonder of discovery. We have to take the same passion people direct to their faith and use it to fuel curiosity about the natural world. We have to teach that science has a spiritual dimension; not in the sense of supernaturalism, but in the sense of how it connects us with something bigger than we are.

That’s a hard task, one that falls to the Sagans of the world, but even that—as the futile ministrations of BioLogos have shown—doesn’t work very well. Not everyone is filled with awe when they learn about cosmology or evolution, and I bridle at the idea that we have to emphasize science’s “spiritual” dimension.

If you can’t turn people on to science by imparting some of the amazing things we’ve found, and showing our own enthusiasm about them, then what else can we do? The brand of science cheerleading in which a popularizer regularly exclaims “Isn’t that wonderful?“, seems a bit demeaning.

But this got me to thinking about a related question: “Is it ever good to have faith in something?” with “faith” construed as “believing something firmly in the absence of good evidence.” Or “under what circumstances should we just go along with other people’s faith?”

That brings up the “dying grandmother” scenario, in which someone on their deathbed is consoled by the thought that they’ll soon be with God. Few of us are churlish enough to counter those beliefs. But, as Gleiser notes, many people in horrible situations—dire poverty, illness, and the like—find consolation in religion: their hope that God will help them, or all will be set right in heaven.

I see that as useful to those individuals but bad for society. Such beliefs may bring consolation but, as Marx realized, remove the impetus to alleviate the situations that make faith necessary. To me, that’s a good reason to go after faith in general (and work towards the type of society that makes religion superfluous), but not necessarily to preach atheism to the afflicted. I still feel that faith—belief in the unevidenced—is a disease that requires a societal cure, for it’s always better to have good reasons for what one believes.

Or is it? At what point should we simply shut up and let people believe whatever fairy tales console them? Is it better to just work towards a better world and hope that that will erode faith? Or can we build a better society without working against religion?

h/t: Tom