Science, Religion, and Curiosity

Are atheists better at “wonder” than religious persons?  Does abandoning belief in God increase one’s sense of awe before the complexity and beauty of the natural world?  Put negatively, does praising and thanking God for the gift of creation render one less likely be awed by the way the world works as a natural system?  Yes, say many scientists and the writers referred to as the New Atheists.  

Here is the end of Steve Kroft’s interview with J. Craig Venter last night on 60 Minutes.

"You know, I've asked two or three times, 'Do you think you're playing God?' I mean, do you believe in God?" Kroft asked. 

"No," Venter replied. "I believe the universe is far more wonderful than just assuming it was made by some higher power. I think the fact that these cells are software-driven machines and that software is DNA and that truly the secret of life is writing software, is pretty miraculous. Just seeing that process in the simplest forms that we're just witnessing is pretty stunning." 

So let me tease out what Venter seems to be saying.  The universe is “wonderful.”  People who believe in God don’t specialize in “wonder.”  They specialize in “assuming the world was made.”  They traffic in what’s flat and clear and easily said.  But science is more curious.  It presses harder into the mystery of reality.  It pursues natures’ “secrets.”  People who believe in God “assume” that they know what’s true, and that leaves them in control.  Scientists respond to reality in a way that opens up our lives to an emotionally charged response to it all: “stunning.”

Venter isn’t part of the New Atheist group.  But this claim that religion blocks wonder is part of their argument.  I have heard friends say something similar.  There may be something to the claim that non-theists are more likely to respond to reality with awe and wonder.  Most professional scientists don’t believe in God.  And let me make a huge generalization: most religious people in North America aren’t scientifically curious.  It is also true that many religious people are anti-intellectual and anti-science.  But that’s not my point here.  My point is about curiosity and wonder.  So even in the case of the well educated practitioners of religion who affirm Darwinian evolution and all the other prevailing theories about how the world works, there is often little energy and passion about scientific matters.

Why might this be?  Well, maybe they weren’t educated by curious teachers and don’t now have curious people in their lives.  Maybe they work hard, and have families, and don’t have time to ponder the universe just like they don’t have time to do twenty other things they’d like to do.  Fair enough.  But I’m wondering whether religious wonder and scientific wonder are a zero sum game.  This is what the New Atheists argue. 

I can’t claim to represent all religious people.  Not even all Christians.  But there seems nothing about Christianity that precludes scientific wonder.  In fact, there is plenty to recommend wonder as the best way of responding to the world.  I think the same argument can be made for other religious traditions.  

But if you want to pick out right-wing, anti-intellectual, politically and socially conservative forms of religion (as Venter and the New Atheists appear to be doing), then I have to grant the point.  The life of the worshipping community (in that particular form) seems to preclude an openness to the universe, a sense of modest wonder at how it all works, and the energy to strive into it all to see how much we can find out.  

I’d like to think that it’s not an either/or.  I’m not trained as a scientist, but I’m voraciously curious about how the world works.  Quantum mechanics, general relativity, and many things in-between leave me awe-struck, sometimes deliriously giddy at the vertigo-inducing attempt to get my head around it all.  At the same time, I praise the God responsible for this mystifyingly complex world, a God as strange and befuddling as anything science investigates.  And I know that there are plenty of religious people just like me.

But the atheists are onto something here.  And I admit, I’m being defensive.  I’m disheartened by the emerging public sentiment that religion and science are competitors.  As a religious person, I’d rather not have fundamentalist versions of faith shape the public discourse about science and religion.  If you’re like me and have little scientific training but need a place to start, I recommend Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.  If that doesn’t make you scientifically curious, check your pulse.