Please forgive me for this being a very long overdue post – I’m afraid I am posting about all of the particularly interesting or meaningful events and experiences I have had as a member of the Religion, Culture, and Identity Learning Community this semester very much after the fact. Better late than never, right?
Way back in February, I was lucky to witness the two Buddhist monks who came to campus creating a ritual sand mandala in the library. I went to lunch with the monks and had a conversation about religion and philosophy, and I was particularly struck by two things one of the monks told me.
When I told him that I am both a Christian and a philosopher, he asked me if I thought that, as a philosopher and a person of faith, I should blindly and dogmatically accept anything I was told about my religion or any philosophical theory I was presented with. I told him that no, of course not; doing so would be neither doing philosophy nor being true to the spirit of faithful inquiry into my own religious experience.
The monk agreed with me, but he took a step further and surprised me with his degree of epistemic humility. He told me that he believed in Buddhism and believed in science, but that if science presented him with a new belief that conflicted with his current religious belief, he would give up the conflicting religious belief and accept the scientific belief instead.
I admire his willingness to rethink his own ideas and his open-mindedness and humility. I wonder, though – is giving up religious belief because of conflicting scientific belief necessary or even allowable? Does it perhaps depend on which belief you are being required to give up. Though some might admire and respect a reflective religious person’s process of giving at least some precedence to science, many might see it as a sign of weakness or lack of religious conviction.
For example, I believe that God created the universe. I also believe in the big bang and in Darwinian evolution – but this is because I do not believe the book of Genesis should be read literally, and my belief in the creator therefore does not conflict with what science tells me about how creation happened.
I believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Science tells me that dead men cannot be resurrected or even resuscitated after three days – but I would never consider revising my religious belief in the face of this scientific evidence, for (Christian) religious phenomena seem in principle to be unbound by science. Of course, this example is not precise – the Buddhist monk was speaking of giving up religious beliefs because of new rather than existing scientific evidence, and scientific opinion has long been that dead people cannot come back to life.
Employing a brief “thought experiment” might make the example more relevant. I believe that God endowed humans with free will. Assume for argument’s sake (meaning that it does not matter that this proposal likely could never happen in reality) that scientists prove beyond a doubt that the entire universe is mechanistically determined, such that human action is never truly free – the physical laws of the universe determine everything that happens and thus that will happen, including the laws governing our brain chemistry that causes us to act in certain ways. In light of a conclusive proof for such a theory, it seems the Buddhist monk would give up belief in free will if he were me. I’m not convinced, and will continue to hold my religious conviction that God gave humans free choice – in spite of conclusive scientific evidence to the contrary.
By no means is this intended to be any kind of slight towards the Buddhist monk. I personally think it wiser to err on the side of being willing to critically examine and revise your beliefs in the face of new evidence than it is to dogmatically accept anything you are told. Moreover, I realize that Christianity and Buddhism are very different religions, and the necessary and sufficient conditions for belief in each are not at all the same. I am not familiar enough with Buddhism to make an informed statement about the appropriateness of giving up a Buddhist tenet because of science that contradicts it. Furthermore, I do not know enough about whether Buddhist beliefs are outside of science in the way Christian beliefs arguably are. However, I think the monk’s statement raises an interesting and relevant issue that is worth exploring further, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts.
– Alida Liberman
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