World Science Fest 2010: Keeping the Faith

The "Faith and Science" event was so popular that World Science Festival had to move it to a larger venue. NYU’s Kimmel Center played host to a provocative discussion on the relationship between faith and science, two seemingly intractable opposites. Or, are they actually two sides of the same coin? While much of New York City melted in balmy weather, the esteemed panelists on stage were cool in the assessments of their own passions and crafts. Faith, it seems, is what both science and religion have in common.

Up on the docket for this other worldly discussion: Francisco J. Ayala, a.k.a. the “Renaissance Man of Evolutionary Biology” (NYT); eminent cosmologist and physicist Paul Davies; principal translator to the Dalai Lama, Thupten Jinpa; and Elaine Pagels, award winning author and expert on Christian history. The insatiably curious journalist Bill Blakemore moderated. String theorist, festival co-founder, and all around science-nerd rock star Brian Greene also made an appearance.

As if discussing faith and science wasn’t going to be interesting enough, Blakemore added an outstanding twist to the evening. Honestly, for the intellectually curious and for those who like to think outside the box, it was a stroke of brilliance. Blakemore had each of the panelists, in turn, choose an image and a piece of music that best described their understanding of the intersection of faith and science. Conceptually, it took the beginning of the session to another level. Bravo, Mr. Blakemore, bravo.

Unfortunately, it was impossible for me to take enough notes to capture the sentiment and reasons each panelist issued for their chosen music and images. Here are their choices, with some highlights from their opening remarks. I leave it to you to make of the image/music combinations what you can. As an added bonus for The Mantle’s outstanding and attentive audience, I have included MP3s of each of the recordings at the end of this post. Curiously, each of the panelists chose classical music. Suffice to say, Jinpa’s selection was the most sublime.

Following these brief descriptions are some closing thoughts by yours truly. I would be delighted to hear the thoughts of any of our readers out there on this issue.  

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Francisco Ayala – image: “Guernica” by Pablo Picasso, accompanied by “El Amor Brujo,” by Manuel de Falla.

Faith is what religion and science have in common.

Think about that for a moment…

Faith is what religion and science have in common. Ayala set the tone for much of the afternoon’s discussion with that salvo. In other words, let us not conflate “faith” and “religion,” a mistake too easily made in everyday discussion (and made now and again on the panel). Religion, of course, requires faith in a higher being. But science, too, requires faith—faith in the promise of trial and error, empirical evidence, theories, and in the scientific process itself.

Ayala chose “Guernica” for its vivid portrayal of the inhumanity in humanity. But the larger metaphor he sought to convey to the packed audience could be achieved with any painting. A masterpiece like “Guernica” can be described on two levels: on the one hand, the coordinates of every brush stroke could be listed, the exact pigments described, the dimensions of the painting enumerated, and so forth. Every detail of the painting could be discussed, but that doesn’t tell you what the painting is about—the emotion it conveys, for instance. Similarly, a story about the reason “Guernica” was painted in the first place, the calamity and horror it depicts, and its abstract images could also be told, but that wouldn’t necessarily give you the full image of the painting either. Thus, a painting can be viewed as two windows looking onto the same world.

In the same way, religion and science are two windows looking out into the same world. Each faithfully and earnestly describes the world, but alone neither provides the whole description of that world. Ayala—Renaissance thinker indeed.

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Paul Davies – image: The Dirac Equation (it's a particle physics thing) embedded in Westminster Abbey, accompanied by the ever powerful and popular “Jupiter,” by Gustav Holst. (Again, MP3s are at the bottom.)

While Ayala took a philosophically neutral tack to the issue of faith and science, Davies tossed his empiricist weight around the room. For he is a man that looks for mathematical underpinnings in life and nature. He is faithful that there exists an underlying, law-like order to life, a belief that gives him comfort (much like religion provides comfort to others). He is a reductionist, which is probably why he chose the eminently simple Dirac equation as his image. Short, sweet, and to the point. (The Dirac Equation may be simple, but Holst’s “Jupiter” is anything but! What might this say about the psychological character of Davies?)

Davies and Ayala agree: it is not science’s place to understand or describe the “why.” Why does this exist? Doesn’t matter. For scientists, what does matter is that it exists, and science must explain how it exists and functions in the universe. Why it is there does not concern them. Which is where religion comes in—to explain the “why.”

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Elaine Pagels – image: Sorry, I missed the image title and with all the zooming around it, I couldn’t quite figure out what I was looking at. Take the image of “Behemoth and Leviathan” from the Book of Job as my best approximation, accompanied by the cosmically singsong “Abyss of the Birds,” by Messiaen.

Pagels, I’m afraid, seemed out of her element. Provocative insights and ponderous questions were lacking in her contributions to the discussion. She often parlayed the moderator’s or fellow panelists’ inquisitive thrusts with “that’s interesting…” or “I will have to think about that…” Her contributions to the history of Christianity may be significant, but as to how science, evolution, neuroscience and the like contribute to religion, and vice versa, she was remarkably tepid.

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Thupten Jinpa – image: Buddha’s face, with the atomic symbol in the third-eye position, accompanied by the über-transcendent “Spiegel im Spiegel” by Arvo Pärt.

And then there was Jinpa, who reminded the audience of Buddhism’s intimate intersection with science. Within this Eastern tradition, empirical evidence—so much the foundation of science—is part of Buddhist tradition, argumentation, and inquiry. Buddhists often look to science to fill in the blanks of spiritual inquiry—astronomy, biology, and neuroscience, for example, all play roles in Buddhist learning and teaching. In a fun twist, then, it’s nice to see scientists at Stanford University hooking up Buddhist monks to scan their brains during meditation, looking for scientific insights into the spiritual happenings in the Nirvana-seeking brain. (Brain they may see, but mind they will never… you’ve been warned, scientists!)

Jinpa cautions, though: compassion and altruism are important elements to understanding humanity, so we should not let science dominate the discourse. (Sounds and awful lot like the warnings issued by the compassionate non-Buddhist Stephen Morse a couple of nights ago at World Science Festival).

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My takeaways from the discussion:

1) Conflict between faith (or more precisely, religion), comes from the tension between religious and scientific zealots who yield no ground on the certainties of their arguments, their “truths.” Both sides should recognize that—ultimately—there will be religious and scientific gray areas and questions that will not be answered.

2) It is astonishing that we can comprehend what is happening in Nature. Doing so lends to the idea that maybe we are the manifestation of the conscience of a universe wanting to become aware of itself. As such, we come to realize a purpose/meaning of life; that we are god because we give meaning to something that seeks meaning. The purpose of life is to search for the purpose of life. This inquiry is the closest science will ever come to faith/religion. Ultimately the two can never be reconciled because science always seeks to explain what, while religion seeks to explain why.

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