SCIENCE, RELIGION AND GOD: My Story.

MILTON DAWES [*]

A Story About Stories

WHEN WE HEAR the word "story," among the images that might pop up are those of a parent telling a child a story, children listening attentively to stories in a classroom, stories we read in books, myths, and so on. We also tend to think of stories as fictional -- not factual -- but fanciful and made up. It is part of my story that we all make up stuff. Our everyday conversations, news reports, books and articles we write, documentaries, etc., are "all made up" -- and as such, they also qualify as stories. In my story, I suggest that we would greatly improve our understanding of ourselves, others, situations we find ourselves in, and the world around us, if we considered the following:

* Anything we read, hear, think, feel, believe, say, write, etc., qualifies as a story.

* The stories we make up about someone else's story is not their story -- it is our story about their story.

* Stories are not objective reports. Reports are not objective, either. Stories will be slanted in terms of an individual's age, experiences, state of mind, beliefs, concerns, motives, world view, values, social standing, and so on.

* Whatever else a story is about, it is also a story about the storyteller -- representing some of their thoughts, feelings, experiences, understanding, etc.

* Individuals in the "same" situation will have different stories to tell.

* Since unavoidably there are gaps in our awareness: No story tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. No story is ever the whole "story."

* Since we depend on light waves, sound waves, electrochemical impulses etc., for information about ourselves and about the outside world, our stories will always be out of synch with their referents. Things were going on before our arrival. In a sense we are always "late" on the scene.

* Stories constituted of relatively static words will necessarily be more or less inaccurate as an account of a world of change, process, and multi-interactions.

* As maps are not the territories they represent, as words are not the processes they stand for, stories made up of words and images are not their own referents. Stories are about referents inside and outside one's head.

* Stories are sometimes presented to us as opinions, facts, truths, insights, intuitions, gut feelings, revelations, news, etc.

* Our stories have endings. We end our stories. But that's not the and of the "story." Happenings do not start or end where our stories start and end.

* Analogous to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and the observer-observed interaction, we sometimes affect to some degree, the situations our stories are about. (Listen carefully to what we call "news.")

* Metaphors and similes embellish our stories. For clearer understanding, it helps if we don't confuse metaphors and similes with descriptions and facts.

* We benefit a great deal when we take responsibility for the meanings we give to the stories we read and hear.

A Storytelling Form of Life

One way we could describe our species is that we constitute a stotytelling form of life. Other life forms, in their own way, "tell stories" -- but not stories anywhere near as extensive, as varied and as fanciful as the stories we tell. We tell ourselves stories about ourselves -- sometimes distressing ourselves with our own stories. We tell other persons stories about goings on in our lives, about our children, our marriages, our fears, hopes, vacations, and so on. We make up and tell each other stories about other storytellers: We might simply repeat their stories; express admiration for or discredit their stories. Politicians tell us stories they think we want to hear - hoping that we will believe these stories and elect them (the politicians) to office. Advertisers use words, images, and music to tell us stories extolling the virtues of their clients' products and services. Revolutionaries tell stories about the good life to come after present leaders are removed. Scientists tell us stories about their d iscoveries of previously unknown relationships. Theologians tell us stories purportedly about God and His/Her relationship with the world. Philosophers tell us stories purportedly about the nature of reality, values, and meanings. Many religious leaders tell us stories about "ultimate realities," about God and Her/His directions for ways we should behave with each other. Some individuals tell stories about their encounters with God. Novelists, playwrights, poets, and film-makers tell us stories which we often fail to perceive as stories about ourselves.

Now politicians, religious leaders, advertisers, other story tellers (including ourselves) do not introduce their narratives by saying "This is my story." Could it be that they/we suspect that we/others would "listen" differently? In my story, I visualize a society with an evolved education system, where teachers at all levels would explicitly announce themselves as "storytellers." They would help students to evaluate what they read and hear in terms of "degrees of fantasy" and "degrees of accurate representation." They would advise students to become more aware of the stories they tell themselves and of the stories they tell to others. And they would also remind students that there are times to withhold judgment on a story.

Sunday School Stories

In my Sunday School days, I heard stories about an all-merciful, all-knowing, and all-powerful God. These stories made little sense to me even then. I had many questions. I found that I couldn't reconcile an omniscient, omnipotent God with ever-present human misery, whether from natural causes, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, or our mistreatment of one another. I reasoned that such an all-knowing, all-powerful God would know, (should know) that many of His (the notion of a female God was not current then) children would behave badly to each other. And furthermore, I thought "What kind of loving earthly father would give his children the knowledge to make guns and bombs and poisonous gases to use on each other? What kind of loving father would allow millions of his children to die of starvation? What kind of loving father would send a son to be crucified to save sinners -- sinners who could have been created without sin in the first place? For what reasons should I expect less from an all-knowing all-mercifu l God?" God, I was told, created everything. So I wondered who created God. I was told He was always there. I reasoned, "Well if He was always there, why doesn't this reasoning apply to the Universe? Couldn't the Universe have always been there?" I also wanted to know, "Who created the devil?" And if the devil was the source of evil -- why did God set this powerful being against us weak humans? The answer I got to these questions when I dared to ask my Sunday School teacher was "God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform" -- a very nice sounding story, but far from satisfying my curiosity. It just didn't make sense then, or now. A friend once wrote at the end of his term paper "Too many unanswered questions." His professor wrote back, "And too many unquestioned answers." I liked that.

"Renormalized" Stories About God

"Renormalization" in quantum theory involves the removal of troublesome infinities in some field equations by a redefinition of parameters. I find this so apt: Can you think of a more infinite variable than our notions of God? Over the years I have read neo-orthodox stories, re-conceived stories, process philosophy stories. In these stories, God was now not all-powerful but limited and voluntarily self-limited. God now suffers with us and His suffering affects us. He couldn't be held responsible for "evil." God was influenced by events and didn't know everything -- could not know in advance. We were co-creators with God, who is like the composer of a unfinished symphony, still experimenting, improvising, and expanding on a theme. I read that evil is inescapable in the long process of creation and that God must wait on the responses of nature and humanity. I read that God changes in response to what we do. Some stories claim that God needs the world in order to be fully actualized. Others claim that God does not need the world to be fully actualized. Would you believe, I have actually read and heard stories about God's purposes and intentions? Now I ask you: If we don't even know well ourselves our children, or our next door neighbor, how in heaven's name can we claim to know the intentions and purposes of God -- whether a redefined God or my Sunday School God? In my story I would characterize our species as "the arrogant storytelling ones."

"God" as a Function

As imaginative human beings we can make up as good a story about God as others can. So here is part of my story -- actually it's not about God: it's a story about stories I have heard and read, purportedly about God. My story has a mathematical basis. God -- more accurately -- "the notion of God" is a function of human awe, fear, curiosity, imagination, hope, belief, knowledge, reasoning, search for meaning, values, and so on, as expressed at particular times in our cognitive evolution. Change the independent variables and the diverse notions of God change. As times go by, I expect our notion of God to keep evolving. However a time-invariant thread connecting these diverse variables is "human reasoning." Our beliefs, knowledge, intuitions, speculations, values, hopes, and fears all involve reasoning. In other words, I believe we create God and gods in our own image based on our current knowledge, beliefs, and reasoning skills. You can check this out for yourself. Do a little survey. Ask ten individuals to te ll you about God or their notion of God. Hear if their stories are exactly like yours or like any other. Ask each one how she/he came to believe what they believed.

Models of Reasoning

If our fears, curiosity, hopes, and values, involve "reasoning," then it seems to me that disciplines that represent models of successful reasoning could help us critically evaluate the stories we hear about anything -- including stories that are supposed to be about God. In my story, science and mathematics represent two of our best models of reasoning. They are considered "best" in terms of their usefulness in helping us to make predictions. A scientific theory is so far one of the best reasoning-based explanations we have of certain goings on in the world we know, and mathematics plays a very important part in scientific reasoning. Scientific theories are not considered infallible, but tentative - the best explanations until more inclusive theories are formulated. Since we have to interact with other more and less dynamic structures in the world, and since we are not omnipotent, a system of reasoning that helps us better understand ourselves, that encompasses some basic structures and happenings in the wo rld and our relationship with what's going on in and around us, that helps us anticipate and thus avoid many dangers, has great survival value and seems very much worth our while to emulate.

Our everyday reasoning processes involve observation, awareness, wonder, memory, curiosity, association, intuition, inference, generalization, speculation, explanation, thinking, and feeling, among other variables. A major difference between reasoning in present day science, and reasoning in our everyday life, and in many religions is this: In our everyday reasoning and in many religions, reasoning usually stops at fantasy, speculation, explanations, and generalizations. Explanations become conclusions, and conclusions beget attitudes and behaviors. In science, reasoning does not stop at explanations and generalizations (hypotheses and theories) but is an ongoing activity. Some features of reasoning in science involve observation, curiosity, hypothesis, experiment, theory, prediction, peer review, heuristics, and imagination. I think it worth repeating: Science does not stop at explanations.

Scientists as scientists continue on from their hypotheses (initial thoughts, feelings about, intuitions, etc.) to experiments, and from experiments to the higher levels of generalization and explanation called "theories." Theories beget predictions; predictions lead to further observations, and if predictions are not corroborated it is not the Universe that is considered defective but the story, the theory. So the process continues with new hypotheses, more experiments, a more inclusive theory, and more predictions. Another very important characteristic of reasoning in science is this: Scientists in most instances, focus less on what something "is," and pay more attention to how it behaves -- a more up-to-date way of looking at things.

A Heuristic Approach

Present day scientists do not claim that their story is about everything. They no longer claim that they are engaged in a search for truth. It seems to me that in scientific reasoning, we have one area where we get smarter and smarter in our endeavors to understand some, but not all, features of the Universe. How does this come about? I offer this explanation: it primarily has to do with the "heuristic approach." Heuristics is about using the information, knowledge, understanding, discoveries, etc., that emerged from our explorations, experiments, and experiences in order to guide us towards other experiments and explorations, further knowing and more understanding and other discoveries. The heuristic approach is a very powerful reasoning and learning tool, incorporating experiment and feedback. Using this approach helps us not only to improve our knowledge and understanding in scientific activity, but it also helps us to improve our understanding of, and improve our skills in, any situation that we choose t o explore.

Critical Reasoning not Promoted

Over the centuries, this critical reasoning and heuristic approach, combined with the technologies it has spawned, has been instrumental in permitting humans to walk and drive on the moon and to photograph the earth from the moon. But it has also resulted in nuclear bombs, land mines, and air pollution. Unfortunately the critical reasoning and heuristic approach that constitutes science -- critical evaluating tools that could help us become less confused in our thinking and feelings about things -- has not yet become a part of our educational training and the shaping of our everyday thinking, attitudes, and behavior. The media grandly promotes scientific discoveries, but the critical reasoning approach that contributed to these discoveries has not been adequately recognized, appreciated, and promoted as being "good" for us. And scientists do not engage advertisers to extol the virtues of their critical reasoning approach. Our politicians and teachers do not encourage us through their stories to experiment wi th adding a scientific approach to our other ways of reasoning -- an approach which I believe would improve our problem-solving, decision-making, communication, learning, and other skills. Incidentally, in my story, it does not suit politicians, large corporations, and religious leaders to promote reasoning that might result in people becoming better informed and thus more able to make their own determinations. That is to say, we would not be so easily influenced and deceived, controlled and managed. It might not be so -- but remember -- this is my story.

The critical reasoning approach of science has not been applied enough to our political, social, economic, and international problems. However, I predict that this will not continue for very much longer. Although present scientific explorations are mostly limited to certain phenomena, sooner or later scientists will start exploring areas they have not so far had the courage, interest, or societal support to investigate. If scientific reasoning helps us to learn more about ourselves-in-the-Universe, we can predict that scientific reasoning will eventually be applied to the thorough investigation of religious beliefs and practices.

Faith

Those who see science as in competition with religion, or as a threat to religion, may fear the possibility of loss of the power, influence, and respect traditionally accorded to religious institutions and religious authorities. (The story of Galileo and the Church authorities comes to mind.) Further, the threat perceived may also result from an intuitive sense that scientific reasoning is on demonstrably firmer grounds (involving theories, predictions, and corroboration), than the reasoning behind religious faith. In addition, scientific theories usually provide testable explanations for many phenomena that previously were explained by some religious authority, or were simply accepted in some religions as fact, truth, and revelation.

In fact, many people live their lives without any religious belief whatsoever. (But they do live according to some beliefs not necessarily classified as "religious.") On the other hand, the products of scientific reasoning can be found on us, sometimes in us, and all around us -- in our homes, buildings, bridges, on land, underground, on the sea, in the air, and in outer space.

In both science and religion we find "faith" -- but with some important differences. (It is important that we remember that when we talk about "science" and "religion," we are talking about humans engaged in behaviors we label "scientific" and behaviors we label "religious.") In present day science, objects of investigation are there for other scientists to explore. Certainly one electron is not another -- but behavior patterns attributed to electrons are predictable to a very high degree of accuracy. In many religions we find personal Gods, as well as the Gods of theologians. But personal Gods and the Gods of theologians seem to have differing characteristics and do not "behave" in predictable ways. So considerable faith is required to accommodate these differences. In science there is "faith" in the intelligibility of the Universe, faith in the scientific reasoning process, and in our ability to use this process to increase our understanding of the Universe. Scientists value their theories to the degree th at they correspond with observable phenomena.

In science, speculations, opinions, intuitions, and theories, are matched against observable supporting evidence. This validation process is fundamental in science. But in our everyday life, in our political behavior, and in many religions, our faith is usually in the rightness and truth of our conclusions rather than matched against observable supporting evidence. In our everyday behavior and in many religions, critical appraisal and questioning the accuracy of our stories is usually missing. Our fantasies, gut feelings, speculations and intuitions, are usually considered as "truths and revelations." And as far as the stories I have read, the heuristic approach is not a significant feature of religious practices. Often, instead of recognizing another's story about "truth," "revelations," "fact of the matter," as their story, we adopt a wide range of defensive and often offensive behaviors -- and sometimes even kill each other -- to promote our own individual "truths" and "revelations." It is worth noting to date that no war was ever declared by one group of scientists against other scientists as a way of defending, proving, or imposing their theories on others. In my story, in our everyday behavior and in many religions, we have no universally accepted criteria for critical appraisal of stories. And, except in the fields of science and mathematics, there is no universally agreed-upon method for differences of opinions to be evaluated.

Finding ourselves in a seemingly infinite Universe, with our insatiable curiosity, powerful imagination, and what Bernard Lonergan calls "our unrestricted desire to know," we complement what we don't know with myths, hope, and faith.

Labeling our Experiences

We have experiences to which we give names, and we make up stories about our experiences: One person might label her/his experience "mystic," another "awesome," another "beautiful," "puzzling," "prophetic," "religious," and so on. The point I am making here is this: The label we attach to our experience is not the actual experience. When in the laboratory of living, we forget that "the word is not the thing-process it labels," much confusion arises whether in daily life or in the science laboratory. I particularly like Nicholas Lash's question which I came across in John Polkinghorne's book Reason and Reality: "...if some people find themselves to stand in relation to whatever they consider to be God, how do they know that it is God with whom they are in relation ... ?" It's quite valid to give names to our experiences. For me the problem arises when we manufacture characteristics we didn't experience and/or observe, and then in our stories about our experiences, assert this to be fact, truth, or revelation. This is part of my story. As you might have noticed it is heavily biased in favor of valuing scientific reasoning. But I assure you, I am ready to hear the stories of others who do not necessarily share this view.

Standards Guide Our Reasoning

Whether we are aware of this or not, our thinking, reasoning, and the stories we tell, are all based on some standard, set of values, assumptions, beliefs, guidelines, metaphysics, etc. My reasoning follows guidelines based on my interpretation of the writings of two great (in my opinion) thinkers/reasoners -- Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J., and Alfred Korzybski, the founder of a system called general semantics. Lonergan's story can be read in his books, Insight -- A Study of Human Understanding, and Method in Theology, among other works. Korzybski's story can be read in his books Manhood of Humanity, and Science and Sanity. Now permit me a personal question: Do you know what standards, values, or beliefs, direct your thinking and reasoning? One rea-son you might find this important to know is this: Our standards, values, beliefs and so on work like filters and selectors of our experiences. They influence and direct our thinking, feelings, reasoning, and the stories we make up. Imagine you are wearing blue-tin ted glasses (and you are not aware of this). Concurrently, a friend is wearing yellow-tinted glasses (she is also not aware of this). Do you think there will be differences in the way each of you experience things, what each one of you see, the way each of you reason about what you see, the way each of you think and feel about things, the meanings you give, the beliefs you hold, and the stories you tell about the world?

Resolving Conflicts

We have scales, rulers, and clocks as universal standards to help us minimize conflicts that would arise in our interactions with each other if everyone made their own guesses about weights, distances, and time. Since a common factor in both science and religion is reasoning, it seems to me that conflicts will persist until scientists, theologians, and others find a reasoning standard that is acceptable to all. (In a story, anything is possible.) Conflict between science and religion, (and this can be applied to conflicts in general) might be better resolved when both parties in the discussion recognize that each one is looking at the world through different filters, using different measuring tools, and valuing different reasoning approaches. It is worth emphasizing that in my story, there is no conflict between science and religion that does not include humans. Conflicts arise among individuals and groups; conflicts arise among storytellers when they evaluate their stories as being inconsistent. Conflicts a rise between individuals and groups when they are unaware that their stories are told from different frames of reference, based on different value systems. Conflicts arise when parties are unable to expand their reasoning horizons and embrace the higher viewpoints that would enable them to transcend their individual and group biases. When our stones seem contradictory, it is not the rest of the Universe that needs adjustments, but us storytellers who do not see what we think, feel, believe, know, say, write, or value as stories. It seems to me that one way we could resolve conflicts in any area of our lives, is to hold in high esteem the proposal that no story is ever the whole "story," and that we can always rewrite our stories.

(*.) Milton Dawes lives in Montreal, where he combines lectures, music, and dance in the training workshops he offers in "Personal and Professional Development Through General Semantics."