The Rev. Robert Arnold    Trinity Church, Fredonia

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, columnist David Brooks highlighted the thoughts of many researchers in fields of modern science, and noted how new learning is influencing a new debate on religion and science.

We still have a plethora of scientists that gain much pleasure in putting down religion (Tom Wolfe, “Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died,” 1996).

At the same time, other scientists are not so quick to assert absolute atheism. They take the same learning as the militant materialists and say that understanding the brain merely adds to our appreciation and wonder of our Creator.

I find the learning from the microbiologists and brain researchers fascinating and the debate they launch most interesting. While most of the public culture (and religionists) is still stuck on the “damage” Charles Darwin did to religion in “The Origin of the Species,” the learning from the biology and neurology over the past ten years sheds even greater light on the interplay between fact and faith — where it all comes from and how it all works.

The debate is shifting away from hard-core materialism versus angry religionists. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. “Instead,” writes Brooks, “meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking.” In other words, all of what we do, and think, and feel is biologically based.

Researchers are now spending time trying to understand universal moral intuition. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have built-in instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment. Much of it is based on survival – together you and I might find a way to survive. Alone, if we do not trust one another, I might have to kill you before you kill me! Every cell in our body is programed to die. From the shedding of skin to those specifically assigned to attack and destroy invading pathogens, life is filled with essential purpose. When cells reject their designed purpose and refuse to die, like the cancer cell, that’s when malignancy arises. All organisms, all organizations, operate with these built-in mechanisms of functioning.

The good news in all this, to me, is that perhaps public culture will move off the old “line in the sand”, either/or debate and begin to see, as these scientists do, that religion may be as much a biological reality as it is a transcendent awareness, that the self is not a fixed entity, immortal by nature, but rather an interwoven dynamic of relationships, and that we share common moral intuition with people of all beliefs.

“The real challenge,” says Brooks, “is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits” which, perhaps, explains why Buddhism is on the rise. For we Christians, the challenge remains reaching those who embrace the spiritual but put little stock in divine law or revelation. “Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day.”

Dr. Murray Bowen, father of natural systems thinking, said that it will probably take another step in evolution before we get to the bottom of belief and the biological connections of faith and functioning. But, in the meantime, I’m excited by the debate.

As Brooks says, “We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.”