Many people these days are looking for a path of reconciliation between a scientific worldview and a religious worldview. Some say it can’t exist. I would like to propose a plausible method for finding this path.
If we really want to find that path, we must be willing to explore the ways that are open to travel, and accept that some ways are blocked.
Science is intended as a literal description of nature. If we assume Religion is also intended as a literal description of nature then we are blocked, because, in literal terms, the two sources are often contradictory.
If we assume Religion is intended as a figurative description, the path is now open for further exploration, so let’s explore.
The objection I hear most often, to a metaphorical interpretation of Religion, is that we can then make the words mean anything we want, and so, are unmoored from accountability.
While this is true as far as it goes, it doesn’t go so far as to completely block our path, but only to raise the question of whether it follows that since we could make it say anything, no correct interpretation could possibly exist. And I don’t see that it does. It only requires that we find a method better than guessing for determining which of the possible interpretations is most likely correct.
If we start with the symbolic and try to guess what it means, we could drift forever in a sea of random opinion and motivated bias.
If, on the other hand, we start with our confident mooring in science and look for what kinds of metaphors the facts might reasonably inspire, and then see if there are any matching patterns in the world of Religion… we might find some surprising correlations.
EXAMPLE: Garden of Eden
Start with symbol:
Two humans, made from scratch by an all-powerful creator God and placed in a perfect garden where their dietary needs were automatically met, though they were cautioned not to eat from a tree associated with knowledge, but which temptation they were unable to resist, resulting in their expulsion from the provisioned garden to a life where they had to work for their food, and seek redemption.
Your guess is as good as mine.
Start with science:
A large-brained Hominid whose heritable instincts were developed during millions of years of adaptation to its natural environment, uses its outsized cognitive capabilities to start experimenting with agriculture, which radically and more rapidly altered the environment to which it had been adapted than its biology could now timely adapt, leaving it dangerously conflicted and in need of modifying certain of its instinctual impulses that were now problematic in the new physical, social, and economic environment.
See any resemblance?
Thou shalt not transgress the newly revealed terms and conditions of orderly societal participation if thine intent be to avoid the eternal damnation of species extinction, as befell thine Neanderthal and Denisovan cousins. Thus sayeth the Unavoidable Reality.
Why would a pre-literate, pre-scientific, intelligent, symbol-making ape NOT have constructed easily remembered, orally transmittable, metaphorical narratives that told the story of this existential dilemma, and laid out the cultural rules for avoiding the hazards of evolutionary mismatch in this otherwise fitness-enhancing new environment? And with our currently escalating rate of advancement of environment-altering technology, why would we not be in greater, rather than lesser, need of a robust behavior modification program that a majority of us could remember, believe, and respect, regardless of whether it is expressed in literal or figurative language?
I have no way to prove that this interpretation is THE. ONLY. CORRECT. one. But can we acknowledge that this approach demonstrates at least a plausible allegorical telling of a TRUE story that leaves the path of reconciliation between science and religion unobstructed by reason?