I have been reading a very interesting book called "When They Severed Earth From Sky, How the Human Mind Shapes Myth" by Elizabeth and Paul Barber, and I came across a passage that I'd like to quote at length because I think it is one of the best descriptions of the gap between science and mythology (or religion) that I have ever run into.
"Our science teachers train us to collect evidence for phenonema, in the hope that we may eventually compress the data into predictive rules or 'scientific laws'. If I perceive that the toast always falls jam-side down when I drop it, I want to formulate a law, on the premise that like effects have like causes, and then figure out why the law works that way. If I find an exception, I want to figure out what rule governs the exception.
"But if the world consists of willful beings who make things happen by personal choice--beings who make my toast land on its sticky side out of spite or out of amusement--then one is not led to search for impersonal rules, but rather to ask 'Who caused that?' and 'Why me?' Any avenue of approach related to the situation might lead to the key; any resemblance to or point of contact with something else may prove useful to the problem of the moment. The circumstances under which I upended my toast today differed from yesterday's debacle. To know what Willer(s) to approach, it behooves me to collect as many analogies as possible to the situation to be explained. A phenomenon may be explained in this way as many times as it has significantly different aspects." (emphasis in original)
It is this second worldview that informs the world of the Bible, although the willful beings have been whittled down to one all-powerful God and the lesser demons that constantly challenge Him. This is why in Acts 16 when the earthquake struck the prison where Paul and Silas were confined, the jailer, not knowing anything about the laws of plate tectonics (not only does the earth move, Galileo, the continents do too!) interpreted it to mean that Paul's God was more powerful than the local gods. Hence his odd question, "What must I do to be saved?" (Saved from what? More earthquakes?) Paul replies with the well-known verse, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ . . ." Note that the jailer does not ask who or what is this Lord Jesus Christ or what exactly does Paul mean by all this; no, if Paul's Jesus is so powerful he can loose prisoners from the most secure part of the dungeon, then by all means he wants this God on his side. No questions are needed. Notice, too, that if anyone else was affected by the earthquake (as they must have been), this is irrelevant to the purpose. God sent it as a sign to the jailer, and that's that. Cold comfort to those who lost homes and loved ones; to use a contemporary military term, they are simply "collateral damage."
But we don't live in a world that is run by willful beings--or at least most of us no longer subscribe to that worldview, even in the church. And the church knows it too. Hence the uneasy compromise between science and mythology, where the pastor says "sometimes God uses natural phenomenon to achieve His ends." He's trying to have it both ways and ultimately it won't work. Because most people, I suspect, really do not want to go back to a world where everything happens on the whim of invisible beings and very little is predictable. The kind of work I do--preclinical research--is only possible if the world is run by scientific laws. The same with forecasting the weather. While much is still not known about storms like the one that hit Monday, meteorologists can look at the conditions and the radar returns and say this is likely to happen, be prepared. No need to resort to supernatural explanations (although that doesn't stop some people from trying.)
"Our science teachers train us to collect evidence for phenonema, in the hope that we may eventually compress the data into predictive rules or 'scientific laws'. If I perceive that the toast always falls jam-side down when I drop it, I want to formulate a law, on the premise that like effects have like causes, and then figure out why the law works that way. If I find an exception, I want to figure out what rule governs the exception.
"But if the world consists of willful beings who make things happen by personal choice--beings who make my toast land on its sticky side out of spite or out of amusement--then one is not led to search for impersonal rules, but rather to ask 'Who caused that?' and 'Why me?' Any avenue of approach related to the situation might lead to the key; any resemblance to or point of contact with something else may prove useful to the problem of the moment. The circumstances under which I upended my toast today differed from yesterday's debacle. To know what Willer(s) to approach, it behooves me to collect as many analogies as possible to the situation to be explained. A phenomenon may be explained in this way as many times as it has significantly different aspects." (emphasis in original)
It is this second worldview that informs the world of the Bible, although the willful beings have been whittled down to one all-powerful God and the lesser demons that constantly challenge Him. This is why in Acts 16 when the earthquake struck the prison where Paul and Silas were confined, the jailer, not knowing anything about the laws of plate tectonics (not only does the earth move, Galileo, the continents do too!) interpreted it to mean that Paul's God was more powerful than the local gods. Hence his odd question, "What must I do to be saved?" (Saved from what? More earthquakes?) Paul replies with the well-known verse, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ . . ." Note that the jailer does not ask who or what is this Lord Jesus Christ or what exactly does Paul mean by all this; no, if Paul's Jesus is so powerful he can loose prisoners from the most secure part of the dungeon, then by all means he wants this God on his side. No questions are needed. Notice, too, that if anyone else was affected by the earthquake (as they must have been), this is irrelevant to the purpose. God sent it as a sign to the jailer, and that's that. Cold comfort to those who lost homes and loved ones; to use a contemporary military term, they are simply "collateral damage."
But we don't live in a world that is run by willful beings--or at least most of us no longer subscribe to that worldview, even in the church. And the church knows it too. Hence the uneasy compromise between science and mythology, where the pastor says "sometimes God uses natural phenomenon to achieve His ends." He's trying to have it both ways and ultimately it won't work. Because most people, I suspect, really do not want to go back to a world where everything happens on the whim of invisible beings and very little is predictable. The kind of work I do--preclinical research--is only possible if the world is run by scientific laws. The same with forecasting the weather. While much is still not known about storms like the one that hit Monday, meteorologists can look at the conditions and the radar returns and say this is likely to happen, be prepared. No need to resort to supernatural explanations (although that doesn't stop some people from trying.)
