My Faith Has Rougher Seas
After yesterday's post, I went and looked up Stephen Jay Gould's essay on "non-overlapping magesteria." Gould argues for scientists to respect the boundaries of their area of expertise, and respecting faith's claims to questions of metaphysics and spirituality. But near the end, he describes his personal view:As a moral position (and therefore not as a deduction from my knowledge of nature's factuality), I prefer the "cold bath" theory that nature can be truly "cruel" and "indifferent"-in the utterly inappropriate terms of our ethical discourse-because nature was not constructed as our eventual abode, didn't know we were coming (we are, after all, interlopers of the latest geological microsecond), and doesn't give a damn about us (speaking metaphorically). I regard such a position as liberating, not depressing, because we then become free to conduct moral discourse-and nothing could be more important-in our own terms, spared from the delusion that we might read moral truth passively from nature's factuality.
But then, he sympathizes with a letter writer to the New York Times, commenting on Pope John Paul's statement on evolution who says: What can one say about evolution, even a spiritual theory of evolution? Pain and suffering, mindless cruelty and terror are its means of creation. Evolution's engine is the grinding of predatory teeth upon the screaming, living flesh and bones of prey. ... If evolution be true, my faith has rougher seas to sail.
But then, he sympathizes with a letter writer to the New York Times, commenting on Pope John Paul's statement on evolution who says: What can one say about evolution, even a spiritual theory of evolution? Pain and suffering, mindless cruelty and terror are its means of creation. Evolution's engine is the grinding of predatory teeth upon the screaming, living flesh and bones of prey. ... If evolution be true, my faith has rougher seas to sail.