Friday, July 14, 2006

Let's work together

My post counter tells me this is my 100th post, so I thought I'd do something really powerful, exceptional, important. But I can't think of anything so I'll have to settle for something at least serious.

Every week almost I read about the "science-religion conflict". Well I can't speak for what some "scientists" and some "religious types" do, but I insist there is no conflict between science and theology. And since I do both in my limited way, I am passionate about this.

Are not both "science" and "theology" attempts to find the truth? Truth is truth and none of your post-modernist metanarrative rubbish, please. Any perceived conflict must therefore be due to doing bad science or bad theology, or I guess both. They may work in apparently different styles - the experiments are not quite like each other all the time - and in different areas. But both are rational. Both observe and construct theories. Which are subject to analysis. To see if they contradict observed facts (experience of God is a fact, although of a different sort and subject to careful scrutiny).

In fact I assert that by any normal meaning of the word "science" (like knowledge) then theology is a science. So are philosophy, metaphysics, history (all about causation), psychology and you can go on. Some of them we call inexact, forgetting how inexact the cutting edge of theoretical physics can be. Inexactness is not a problem - declaring something exact when it is inexact is the root of trouble, because it's bad science.

Finding the truth is bad enough without your fellow-seekers slagging you off.

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