Faith Versus Fact : Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible (9780698195516) (31 page)

What about mathematics and philosophy? They're a bit different. Although they're useful
tools
for both science and rational thinking, they don't by themselves yield knowledge about the universe. (I'm not one of those who see mathematical truths as existing somewhere out there in the universe, independent of human cognition.)

The physicist Sean Carroll
argues that to be scientific, a claim must have two qualities. It must be possible to imagine a world in which it is
false,
and it must, at least in principle, be testable by experiment or observation in the natural world. This is not true of mathematics. The Pythagorean theorem
must
be true in all worlds having the proper geometry, and is not tested but
demonstrated
. It is for this reason that mathematicians speak of “proving” a theorem, while scientists speak not of proof but of the strength of evidence. Nevertheless, it would be churlish to argue that the Pythagorean theorem, the value of pi as the ratio of two measurements of a circle, or Fermat's Last Theorem do not constitute “knowledge.” They are indeed knowledge (or “truth”)—knowledge not about the universe, but about the logical consequences of a series of assumptions.

Philosophy can produce a similar kind of knowledge, an understanding of the consequences that follow logically from certain premises. Although
Richard Feynman reportedly dismissed the value of philosophy to science with an infamous remark, “
Philosophy of science
is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds,” he was wrong on two counts. Philosophy of science
is
useful to scientists, and ornithology is useful to birds (many birders are conservationists).
Philosophy, for instance
, provides a rigorous framework for thinking about issues like consciousness, evolution, and evolutionary psychology, for finding fallacies in pseudosciences like creationism, and for interpreting science for the layperson. One of the great values of philosophy is its ability to find important logical errors. A good example is Plato's “Euthyphro Argument,” which shows that, contrary to the claim of theists, most people derive their morality not from God's dictates but from secular thinking. This too seems a kind of knowledge.

But is morality itself a way of knowing? That is, are there objective moral “truths” to be discovered? I think not, for ultimately morality must rest on preferences: something seems “right” or “wrong” because it is either instilled in us by evolution, or conforms or fails to conform to how we think people should behave for their own good and for the good of their society. Some moral preferences are often nearly universal (“It is immoral to kill an innocent person”), but, as in the moral dicta of various religions, they often diverge among cultures. And when that happens, one must then justify why one act is moral and others are not. Such justification is invariably subjective. Religious people claim to discern right and wrong from revelation or scripture, which in the case of the Old Testament clearly approves of practices—slavery and the execution of adulterers and those caught working on the Sabbath—that we regard today as patently immoral.
The Old Testament God
also approved of genocide, ordering the complete extirpation—men, women, and children—of, among others, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, and the Amalekites. These God-approved acts are quietly ignored by most believers.

Secularists like myself are often
consequentialists,
claiming that what is “moral” is what promotes a situation that you prefer, like harmonious societies, the well-being and flourishing of other people, and so on. And those preferences can (and must) be
informed
by observation and study—science. If you believe, for instance, that torture is wrong because it's incapable of extracting useful evidence that can save lives, such a belief can in principle be tested. But
even if it can, that doesn't settle the issue, for people differ in how they weigh the saving of lives against inflicting pain on possibly innocent individuals, or against the detrimental effect that sanctioning torture has on a society's self-image and credibility. On what single scale can you objectively weigh the pain of someone who's tortured, the possible saving of lives from that pain, and the brutalization of society that might accompany the legal use of torture? Is there an “objective” answer to whether a third-trimester abortion is immoral, particularly if someone who opposes it has religious reasons?

It doesn't trivialize morality to argue that it is based on evolution and secular reason. After all,
some
principles of behavior are absolutely required for humans to live together in harmony, whether those principles be installed by natural selection or learned from interacting with others. It's worth adding that some people do feel that moral truths can be derived from science.
Sam Harris, for instance
, argues that what is moral is what increases “well-being,” and that well-being can be measured. Most philosophers, however, agree that “ought” can't be derived from “is.” I take their side. And if there are no objective moral truths, then morality isn't a way of knowing, but simply a guide to rational behavior.

This brings us to the realm of subjective experience, particularly the arts. Are painting, movies, literature, and music ways of knowing? (Remember that an affirmative answer still doesn't put religion in the same category.) Curiously, despite believers and academics who answer with a firm yes, the claim is rarely justified, and there is almost no discussion of which knowledge, if any, can be conveyed by the arts.

Clearly, works of art can tell us something about the character of the artist, about what he or she perceived, and about the type of human interactions in the society depicted or experienced by the artist. Just as clearly, the arts can stimulate our emotions or, more didactically, impart lessons about life. Two of my favorite pieces of fiction, F. Scott's Fitzgerald's
The Great Gatsby
and James Joyce's “The Dead,” for instance, depict the futility of aspiring to wealth, repute, and true connections with others
. The Last Picture Show,
my favorite American film, shows people in a small town who, despite their best efforts, can't truly bond with one another. And my favorite foreign film, Kurosawa's
Ikiru
(
To Live
), shows us how a mundane and futile life can be redeemed by one simple act of kindness.

Such works can move us, and can even change us, but do they convey truth or knowledge? In the unforgettable last scene of
Ikiru,
the bureaucrat Kanji Watanabe, dying of cancer, sits in a swing in the playground he has built, happily singing as heavy snow falls all around. After a meaningless life of shuffling papers, he's finally done something
real,
bringing joy to children he'll never see. This depiction of redemption always brings me to tears. And Kurosawa surely intended us to feel that way. But we can disagree about whether
we
would feel redeemed in the same way. Although I can put myself in Watanabe's shoes, I'm not so certain that, given my temperament, I'd feel that building a playground could compensate for a lifetime of tedium.

We're often told that art and literature connect us to others, affirming our common humanity. But is that a truth about the universe? People are similar in some ways (we are devastated at the death of our partner) but different in others (only a fraction of us are intensely ambitious); art that points out these commonalities and disparities simply reinforces conclusions we learn empirically—from experience. It may do so in an artistic way—a way that makes us feel deeply—but it's not new knowledge. In many cases fiction or cinema immerses us in novel situations, challenging us to imagine what it would feel like to be in someone else's position. But would we really feel like Watanabe if we were sitting in his swing at the end of our lives? How do we know? Stimulating the imagination is not the same thing as imparting knowledge.

There are some exceptions. Before the existence of photography, sculptures or paintings could tell us how things appeared. We learn, for example, what the Hapsburgs looked like with their genetically inflated lower lips. Tolstoy's wonderful novella
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
was supposedly used in medical schools to help doctors understand what it feels like to die, and doctors still recommend it to teach empathy:

Over a century after publication
,
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
remains poignant to medical educators. It reminds us that as knowledgeable as we might be, it is still difficult to put ourselves in the patient's shoes. It reminds us that the same forces that distanced Ivan Ilyich from his caretakers continue to separate patients and physicians. . . . The goal of medical education should be to preserve the capacity to imagine a patient's suffering; we don't need to
“teach” empathy as much as we need to preserve the innate empathy the student brings. The study of medicine, the focus on disease and organ systems, can rob one of the qualities that brought one to medicine.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
is a touchstone, a means of reconnecting with the sense of calling, and a reminder of how potent being fully present with the ill can be, a timeless therapeutic tool.

But the point about empathy has been made many times before: it is a “reminder,” not a new discovery. In the end, Tolstoy's story doesn't convey new knowledge about death, but fictionalizes (albeit beautifully) knowledge presumably based on empirical observation. Indeed, Tolstoy could have been completely wrong about the feelings attendant on dying, and surely many people don't share Ivan Ilyich's final emotions. The story moves us because, if we've experienced the death of others, it generally rings true. Nevertheless, for doctors or medical students who lack empathy for terminal patients, the story may be a tool that prompts them to learn how dying people feel, just as philosophy helped physicists think more deeply about quantum mechanics.

In an essay on the cognitive value of art, the philosopher Matthew Kieran argues that whatever truth inheres in painting and literature comes from observing the real world:

Consider the kind of putative insights
we gain from fictions. Goya's
Disasters of War
(1810–1820) may convey war's horrors or Austen's
Pride and Prejudice
the dangers of self-regard, but do we learn such things from the artworks concerned? The idea that war is horrific or that pride comes before a fall is commonplace and trivial. If we already believe the message of such works then we cannot be said to learn anything from them. If we do not, then how could we learn from make-believe worlds that are not tied to truth about the real world? . . . For any truth claim conveyed through art we should look to the relevant mode of inquiry to check if it is warranted. We cannot learn, for example, from Austen about character—that is a matter for psychology.

I have asked literature professors and critics to give me examples of truths actually
revealed for the first time
by literature, rather than affirmed
by it, and haven't received a single convincing answer. I would expect the same equivocation for music, painting, and other art, save for their ability (as in photography and painting) to tell us what something looked like. Art can prompt us to find truth, but in the end that truth must be based on reason and observation.

Note, too, that different works of art convey different—and sometimes diametrically opposed—truths, resembling the “truths” of different faiths. While scriptures and innumerable religious novels affirm the idea of a loving and omnipotent God, Voltaire's
Candide
satirizes it. Picasso's
Guernica
and the paintings of Goya convey the horrors of war, while innumerable Romantic paintings affirm its glory. Every
Piss Christ
by Andres Serrano—a crucifix immersed in a glass of the artist's urine—is offset by a worshipful
Isenheim Altarpiece
by Grünewald, a depiction of Christ's Crucifixion that I consider one of the world's most moving paintings. Surely Leni Riefenstahl's adulatory movies about Hitler and Nazism fall within the realm of “art” (and propaganda), but the truths we draw from them now differ from what the artist intended. What “knowledge” we get from such works is, at best, the knowledge of what the artist was trying to say.

Finally, it is clear that people of different cultures or different backgrounds will respond to art in different ways, gleaning diverse (and probably disparate) “knowledge.” Would an Inuit draw the same lessons from
Moby-Dick
as Americans do now (I'm not counting the accurate descriptions of whaling, which came from Melville's research). Do we find the same “knowledge” in
Beowulf
that the Anglo-Saxons did ten centuries ago? What “truths” inhere in literature depend on one's background and culture, making them very different from the truths of science.

I'm certainly not arguing that art is worthless. Far from it. I derive immense satisfaction from books and paintings. But I appreciate them for their emotional resonance, for the depiction of other points of view, and for sheer aesthetics. Despite all this, I argue that art cannot ascertain truth or knowledge of the universe, simply because it lacks the tools for such inquiry. Insofar as art conveys knowledge, that comes from empirical observation and not through the artist's revelations, which, like the revelations of religious believers, tell us about the artist herself rather than the realities beyond her mind. Perhaps it's best to see art not as a way of knowing, but as a way of
feeling,
of giving us access to sumptuous beauty, personal validation, and, as with Buddhist meditation, a sense of solidarity and unity with others and the universe as a whole. Art intensifies and expands our subjective experience, and it's none the worse for that. And by stimulating our emotions and curiosity, it can be a tool, prompting us to search for real, verified knowledge.