Religion and Science

Religion and science are often viewed as being in conflict. Others say they should be viewed as separate from each other, addressing completely different questions. Unitarian Universalism, however, is a religion which embraces science. Our living tradition draws from many sources incuding the "guidance of reason and the results of science." Here are eight interesting sermons on the relationship between religion and science.


Is Science a Religion?
By: Rev. Mike Young, First Unitarian Church of Honolulu
Date: February 9, 1997

Rev. Young challenges the claim made by evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins that science can’t be a religion because religion requires faith – belief without evidence. Rev. Young argues that Dawkins has bought into the popular notion of religion which is too narrow. Liberal religion recognizes that human knowledge is always uncertain and incomplete which gives us space to grow and change. Science and religion are human enterprises that maintain their vitality by preserving a quality of tentativeness about the answers they offer.

"Faith is not about believing what you know ain't so, and it's not about believing despite a lack of evidence or in the face of contradictory evidence. Faith is the courage to go ahead and, by golly, make the decisions even though you know perfectly well that the last word is not in and that you may be making a mistake. It is that act of trust in the face of uncertainty. "


Reconciling Science and Religion
By: Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore, First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany
Date: January 9, 2000

Rev. Trumbore discusses philosopher Ken Wilber’s theories for reconciling science and religion. It has been shown that our mind progresses through stages of awareness as we mature and Wilber proposes that there are other more expansive states of consciousness that correlate to the mystical experiences which some people are able to achieve through meditation or other spiritual practices. Wilber suggests that the integration of science and religion can be achieved by emphasizing direct, repeatable experiences that can be verified by a community of practitioners.

"Where religion and science can meet once again and find common ground is the center of the scientific method - direct, repeatable experience. Just as the laws of the movement of objects can be directly witnessed and repeated by anyone sufficiently trained in the scientific method, so too are methods taught by spiritual leaders that also lead to direct, repeatable experiences that can be verified by a community of practitioners. Enlightenment can be approached with the same precision as a scientific experiment."


Is Science Religion? Stories of the Overlap of Religion and Science
By: L. Russell Alberts, Ph.D., Second Unitarian Church of Omaha
Date: March 6, 2006

In this sermon Dr. Alberts points out that both religion and science are engaged in telling us stories that explain the world. The tension is less between religion stories (myths) and science stories (theories) but more about how literally we interpret the stories of religion. Good religion, as defined by theologian Karen Armstrong, allows for different interpretations of its scriptures and focuses on the underlying meaning of the story. Bad religion, however, requires a strict literalness to its stories and is intolerant of any differences when religious and scientific views clash. This can lead to strong, and sometimes violent, reactions on hot-button issues that overlap science and religion. Dr. Alberts discusses how these differences have surfaced in the areas of abortion, cloning and homosexuality.

"We need myth, the stories that give us transcendent truth beyond the truth or fiction of their actual occurrence. We need the theories of science, the stories that tie together the observable facts of the actual universe we live in. Because once we know the facts, we can discuss what to do with them and we can decide what they spiritually mean to us."


No Need of That Hypothesis
By: Rev. Edmund Robinson, The First Church in Belmont (MA), Unitarian Universalist
Date: September 18, 2005

The title of this sermon echoes the response of LaPlace to Napolean when the emperor asked the French mathematician where God was in his description of the mechanics of the solar system. Rev. Robinson is responding to the anti-evolution proponents of Intelligent Design that he has no need for their hypothesis of God as a clockmaker – designs the universe and then walks away. Nor does he agree with the scientism of some opponents of ID that the scientific view of the world is the only true one. He echoes Ian Barbour’s view that religion and science may relate to each other in four ways – conflict, separation, dialogue, or integration. Rev. Robinson favors dialogue or integration as he believes religion and science have many insights to offer each other.

"But today in the popular mind, the debate has become polarized between atheistic scientists defending evolution and Biblical fundamentalists attacking it. What I hope to show is that liberal religion needs to be heard in this debate, to show that one can be both an evolutionist and spiritual, that the middle ground is quite broad and desperately needs to be defended."


The Religion Called Science
By: Burns Fisher, Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua
Date: December 2, 1990

Mr. Fisher, a scientist by profession, presents the view that scientific theories are metaphors that describe the natural world. A theory must correctly describe data that has been collected through experimentation and it must be able to predict future experiments. However a theory doesn’t have to be explanatory and more than one theory can be used to describe the same phenomenon. For example, the theory of gravity doesn’t explain how it works and different aspects of light can be described using theories of light as a wave and as a particle. Both science and religion use metaphors to describe the world and to answer the questions within their purview. Both science and religion must provide the freedom to select the metaphors which are most appropriate to a given context.

"To me, the freedom from one single orthodoxy, be it that of science, or of traditional religion is the very essence of being a Unitarian-Universalist. Both science and traditional religion provide metaphors to think about the world. As Unitarian-Universalists, we must recognize that many seemingly conflicting traditions and teachings are useful in different contexts. Further, we must recognize that if we stubbornly chain all our innermost thoughts and beliefs to one metaphor we are hobbling our ability to express ourselves, and even our ability to think and feel. "

The Elegant Universe
By: Rev. David Owen, Unitarian Universalist Church of Corpus Christi
Date: unknown

Rev. Owen suggests that religion and science share a common need to reveal the hidden forces beyond the appearances we perceive. Both attempt to find that which unites and grounds all reality. Although attempts to find a common ground for religion and science have been mixed Rev. Owen is hopeful because he sees a similarity in the core story that each tells us. That story describes a distant past when everything was unified and in harmony but then became separate and estranged. Science and religion offer us pathways to reconnect with the universe and live in harmony.

"Our lives exist in an exquisite mystery, and science and religion move hand in hand in revealing the supreme elegance of the universe we live in. Science may not be able to provide us with doctrines on how to live. But how we live may be influenced by understanding just how delicate, and even precarious our place in the universe is."


Science Pursues The Real; Religion, The True
By: Rev. Catharine Harris, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Boulder
Date: February 18, 2001

Summary: Rev. Harris has benefited from the scientific advances of our age as medical technology enabled a hole in her heart to be repaired. However she is concerned that our emphasis on science has left a hole in the heart of our culture. She understands that those involved in science, like religion, are motivated by a desire to understand life’s mysteries and often experience awe and wonder before life. Her concern is with "fundamentalist science", also known as scientism. Rev. Harris describes scientism as the view that all knowledge and wisdom must be derived from the scientific method and that the only reality is the physical reality. She believes that science is not capable of dealing existential and global questions human beings have. Overemphasizing the role of science at the expense of religion has left us feeling empty and anxious, with a hole that needs to be repaired.

"Religion deals with six things--meanings, values, final causes, invisibles, qualities, and superiors. These are aspects of life that science cannot get its hands on. I will give you a couple of examples. Every Sunday, I strike my singing bowl after the announcements. Dick can tell me the sound is pleasurable because it is a nearly perfect sine wave. However, it is we humans who hear it as an invitation to leave our quotidian affairs and enter a deeper level. Similarly, we light the chalice. We can describe that saying we strike a match and light the wick in oil. We don't light it because we need light. We are inviting we humans without tedious explanations to move to a deeper level where we remember the entire span of UU history, the people who have gone before, of the other UUs worldwide who are lighting their chalice today, of the children who will follow us, of our UU values of love, truth, and action and much, much more."


The Religion of Science
By: Dr. Davidson Loehr, First UU Church of Austin
Date: 25 February 2001

Dr. Loehr believes that Science has become the dominant religion of our culture. First he describes the pre-scientific world view of a scant 200 years ago. This is followed by a description of how the scientific advances of the nineteenth century undermined that world view. During that process, Dr. Loehr argues, Science itself became a religion and he offers a list of the "Top Ten things that Science took over from religion in the 19th century." The success of science was achieved by limiting its scope to questions of fact and eschewing questions of meaning. But those questions persist and for Dr. Loehr it is necessary to have a religion which satisfies our minds and our hearts.

"I think the primary reason our sciences have been so successful is because they have, from the start, limited their focus to matters of fact rather than matters of meaning. Sciences have intentionally ignored the existential and subjective questions. They may be essential to us, but they are not scientific questions. No one can make a scientific pronouncement on what we should love, how we should treat our neighbors, whether it is more moral to have an abortion or to bring an unwanted child into an uncaring environment, or a thousand other moral, ethical, subjective questions."