Gould's Kettle

On his blog, Arni Zachariassen posts a passage from John Polkinghorne's Questions of Truth which trots out the idea that science and religion are not incompatible because science answers "how" questions and religion answers "why" questions. Polkinghorne uses the analogy of a kettle whose boiling water can be explained by the fire burning under it but the reason why it is boiling is because John want's a cup of tea. Stephen J Gould was less homey in his rendition of this concept and apparently needed an acronym: NOMA - Non-Overlaping MAgisteria. Below I reproduce the comments I contributed to Mr Zachariassen's post more or less as it appears on his blog:

Non-Overlaping MAgisteria works nicely as a philosophical stance but I always run into trouble when trying to apply it to the real world, to the way people actually practice religion. While many of a more intellectual bent seem inclined to separate the hows from the whys, the vast majority of believers hold that the active work of the divine is central to why they believe. They will tell you that the beauty and complexity of the universe could not have come about without some intelligence behind it. They will look for divine interventions in their family relationships, careers, health and parking places - [couldn't resist! ;)] They will tell you that they have felt their heart strangely warmed. They will tell you that your actions now will be balanced by fortune in this life or a future one.

All of these common religious experiences are hows, not whys. They express either a belief in a supernatural mechanism that determines events in the world or a direct intervention of the divine into the workings of the physical world (I am including mental states here). This is where I believe analogies like the Kettle fall short (or Stephen J Gould's Non-Overlapping MAgisteria). They explain only a part of what religion does - the part that appeals to the analogist - while pretending that the "how" elements endemic to religion either don't exist or are somehow not valid.

Reasons to Believe

Up until this point I have found that precious few of reasons people seem to have for believing in God have attracted my respect: (1) a personal, internal experience and (2) the apparent design of the universe. It is easy to see the former as pretty persuasive to the experiencer and yet it is nearly powerless in convincing others. I have some sympathy for those who see a creative hand in the workings of the universe but science offers an answer to almost every question that God supposedly answers about what we see. He is all but reduced to hiding in the gap before the Big Bang.

Now, I have developed a sympathy for another impulse that leads many to Faith: alienation. If you do not feel like the world you are forced to move through is not your real home, you are fortunate. If you did not feel this way as a teenager, you were on some heavy meds! We all feel this way to some degree at some time. How simple to conclude that our feelings are actually instincts pointing to the unseen truth, that there is another place, another person whose discovery will complete us and stop these feelings forever. Heck, Disney made this movie at least half a dozen times: Sword in the Stone, Little Mermaid, Hercules, Aladdin, ... Expose this temptation to religious indoctrination and proselytizing and that one true home becomes a heavenly one, that missing father becomes the father of all creation.

I would rank this particular faith-producing influence on the same level as the creationist impulse - compelling in the absence of a critical or skeptical outlook and yet not so difficult to root out as John Wesley's "heart strangely warmed."

I imagine that as I get older, mellower and (hopefully) wiser I will add to this list, acknowlege and accept the range of experiences that lead people to do the (sometimes squirrelly) things that they do. And, yes, the current post was triggered by my own experience of alienation although in this case at odds with the church (don't get me started on "Purity" lock-ins). I can only hope that I will not be so close-minded that only my own discomfort can ever lead me to accept the validity of the experiences of others. [Can we count that as an atheist prayer? ;)]