Science And Religion

If you’ve nev­er lis­tened to a Pod­cast, well let me make a rec­om­men­da­tion. Talk of the Nation’s Sci­ence Fri­day, on NPR, began releas­ing their shows in Pod­cast (mp3’s) a few weeks ago. I grew up watch­ing Ira Fla­tow on New­ton’s Apple, and I love get­ting to lis­ten to the grown up ver­sion today. Well, last week’s show, was two hours devot­ed to dis­cussing Sci­ence and Reli­gion. I had a cou­ple of posts last week on Reli­gion (one of which was worth read­ing), so this seemed some­what time­ly for me.

The first hour was with three physi­cists (a Pres­by­ter­ian, a (hard­core) athe­ist, and a Hin­du) and a Roman Catholic the­olo­gian. This was the most respon­si­ble con­ver­sa­tion on the top­ic of the dual­i­ty of sci­ence and reli­gion that I have ever heard. After speak­ing to their indi­vid­ual back­grounds in per­son­al reli­gion, they dealt with the obvi­ous ques­tion: is the ques­tion actu­al­ly sci­ence ver­sus reli­gion, or do they co-exist? They all go on to dis­cuss the roles of reli­gion and sci­ence in per­son­al choic­es as well as soci­ety. One of the most enlight­en­ing dis­cus­sion is on the answer to ques­tions on “why?” I even found the indi­vid­u­als who called into the show as con­tribut­ing a great deal to the dis­cus­sion (which is so rare, even on a show I respect as much as Sci­ence Friday).

The sec­ond half of the show is ded­i­cat­ed to how reli­gion effects the ethics of sci­ence and to what extent it should play a role in the process. Judaism, Islam, and Chris­tian­i­ty are all rep­re­sent­ed. Fur­ther (and at least one of the guests speaks to this), the dis­cus­sion is put forth in the frame­work of want­i­ng to dis­cov­er and under­stand. The argu­ments that sci­ence is some­how inher­ent­ly evil are all kept very much to a min­i­mum here, which is refresh­ing. It’s a shame to see that some­how cov­er­age of that atti­tude is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of being fair and balanced.

My favorite part, I think, came from not one of the sci­en­tists, but from the the­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, who described “lay­ered expla­na­tions”, in get­ting to the why. His sim­ple anal­o­gy is this: a pot of water boil­ing on the stove. Sci­ence explains the boil­ing as excit­ed mol­e­cules. How­ev­er, step­ping back, the water is boil­ing because one turned on the stove. From an even wider per­spec­tive, this is because the indi­vid­ual want­ed a cup of tea. This expla­na­tion reminds me of the (very won­der­ful) Pow­ers of Ten book, which also is all about per­spec­tive. The guest con­cludes that reli­gion and sci­ence are not at odds, as they do not work at the same lev­el. The why to which they speak are not the same, even for the same phe­nom­e­non. This won­der­ful­ly encap­su­lates a por­tion of my own world view. I would per­son­al­ly describe the two at per­fect right angles: over­lap­ping, but not opposing.

This isn’t to say that I agree with all of the guests or callers, as I most cer­tain­ly don’t. How­ev­er, their dis­cus­sion is enlight­ened and refresh­ing in the age of cable TV shout­ing heads. If you want to see just how cool pod­cast­ing can be, and lis­ten to some great con­ver­sa­tion on some pro­found top­ics, take a cou­ple of hours in your car or at work and listen.

Until iTunes 4.9 is avail­able, you should use iPod­der to grab your pod­cast feeds. Get iPod­der 4 here and find the Sci­ence Fri­day Pod­cast here. I also sub­scribe to Sci­Fi Wire, Engad­get, and Make Mag­a­zine pod­casts, if you’re interested.