Holmes Rolston III - Science and Religion: An Introduction for Youth

S CIENCE AND R ELIGION

An Introduction for Youth

S CIENCE AND R ELIGION

An Introduction for Youth

Holmes Rolston III

2019 Holmes Rolston III

Science and Religion

An Introduction for Youth

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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Copyright 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Control Number:2018958215

ISBN 978-1-595559937 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-595559968 (Hardbound)

ISBN 978-1-595559951 (eBook)

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C ONTENTS

W ho do you know that is a scientist? Ask that person what kind of scientist he or she is. This could be your dad or mother. Or a teacher at school. Or neighbor. Maybe you are already a young scientist who has done experiments at school. How did you go about it? Ask your adult scientist how scientists think. You may get different answers from different scientists, but answers will probably go something like this: scientists study the causes of events in nature, also the social world, and try to find laws and theories that help to explain how these events happen.

Find out whether your scientist works in a laboratory or outdoors (in the field, scientists may say). Ask your scientist what he or she has been studying. Maybe trees growing in forests. Or what makes kids sick. It may take some years to learn what scientists already know (a college education and further study). But ask your scientist whats new. Whats not so well understood yet? This will be called research.

When the science has been more or less worked out, scientists will say they have a theory, which has been discovered by studying the observed facts. Now they can know (predict) what to expect further to find, more facts. The theory also tells them what they should not expect to find.

This will be related back to further observations to confirm or disconfirm (as scientists say) the theory, more or less. Then they can try to find a better, revised theory, from which new conclusions are drawn. After this the facts are again considered to see if there is a better fit.

The theory says that new spruce trees should be growing after the big old trees burned in a fire, but that isnt happening. Maybe the fire released some pollutants into the soil. The theory says that the sick kids who take antibiotics should be getting well, but only half of them are, so whats the problem? Maybe some of the germs arent any longer being killed by the antibiotic? Or maybe we were wrong about what disease half of the kids had.

Scientists may say here, using some fancy (professional) language, that they generate and test hypotheses. They think up an explanation that they have a way of checking. Run a new soil test in the spruce forest. Try a different antibiotic and see if the other half of the sick kids get well. They may talk about the scientific method.

You might ask your the scientist what isnt science. See what he or she says about music, or storybooks, or poems. Or what a store clerk, a carpenter, a lawyer, or the mayor does. But dont ask about the church not yet.

Scientists talk about observations, but these are soon set in frameworks. A framework is a kind of background. Ask your mother about a picture she had framed, why she chose that frame and the matting color for the picture in the living room. In doing science, the facts become framed in a background. They get fit into a pattern.

The facts are set within and partly become results of their theoretical frameworks, because you tend to see what you are looking for. Or looking with. Ideas and laws are used to classify natural events, and the facts so obtained do not come as simple facts but are rather filtered through these background frameworks.

The more advanced theoretical sciences, like those in astronomy, or genetics, will have a complicated combination of thought-up ideas, using mathematics, interpreting what is seen through telescopes, or microscopes. There may be complicated electronic detectors, which involve interpreting streaks on photographic plates, or meter readings.

You cant build any such detector (such as a meter that measures electric current) unless you have some idea what you are looking forlines of force in an electromagnetic field. If you are lucky, you may get some surprises. These can be clues to new ideas about what you should look for.

A geneticist figures out what some genetic materials are by observing certain colored stains, in layers, from material that has been spun around very fast in what is called an ultracentrifuge (like a top spinning at a hundred miles an hour). Imagine how creative you have to be to see what cant be seen, like very small particles (such as neutrinos) or what scientists call dark matter or black holes.

We can illustrate this framework or pattern idea with three pictures. The first one is well known, an image that seen one way is a vase, and seen another way is twin faces looking at each other.

The second one may be harder for you to see. But if you look at it a whilemaybe have a friend hold it open for you to see from across the roomyou will see both an old woman and a young woman, and you can switch from one to the other.

Here the same part of the picture can be interpreted as a mouth (of the old woman) or a necklace (on the young woman). Also you can see her chin, and then make it out as the old womans nose.

The two ways of seeing are called gestalts. The farmers I grew up with would say it depends on what blinkers you have on. If your dad rides a horse, ask him what blinkers are. Here you will be rather sure that both ways of seeing (two sets of blinkers) were intended by the artist.

Scientists may call such ways of seeing models or paradigms. They may say that both are right or they may argue about which is right. When they fit different models together they call them systems.