The challenge to the enlightenment.

• Author: Marsh, Gerald E.
• Position: Religion - Science, religion and the state - Viewpoint essay

AS FUNDAMENTALIST religious thought strengthens its hold on politics here and around the world, enlightenment values that form the very foundation of modern society increasingly are coming under attack. In the U.S., we call it "culture wars." Looking beyond the smoke and mirrors, the conflict really is between two fundamentally different and mutually exclusive world views: one based on science, reason, and observation; the other on an interpretation of Scripture that dates back to past periods of religious intolerance. The dispute is over how humanity came into being and whether we are imbued with an immortal soul.

Unlike Buddhism and Hinduism, which are not discussed here, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are religions grounded on revelation. To understand why such a basis conflicts with scientific knowledge, it is necessary to understand exactly what is meant by revelation. Most people who use this term are referring to theophany, the sudden and dramatic manifestation of God or the unveiling of a mystery. Moses seeing the unconsumed burning bush and his speaking with God on Mount Sinai and receiving the Ten Commandments inscribed on stone are examples. This conception defines what is meant by God in the context of this essay. Religious fundamentalists--whether Christian, Jewish, or Islamic--believe in theophany, and theophany, as recorded in Scripture, gives an absolute, eternal form of truth. Nothing that comes after can alter such truths. It is for this reason that fundamentalists believe in, and are bound to, a literal interpretation of Scripture.

As theophany, revelation is the exact antithesis of scientific knowledge. People often refer to the "laws of nature" established by science, but this is very misleading. All scientific knowledge is provisional, based on observationally constrained models of the world as perceived through our senses and aided by instruments. Secular, scientific reasoning cannot accept the divine, with its immutable truths, if it is to remain true to itself; knowledge gained from scientific reasoning and knowledge gained through revelation fundamentally are incompatible because one is provisional and the other eternal.

There is, however, a form of revelation--not based on theophany--that is compatible with science. As put by the one-time Catholic priest James Carroll in Constantine's Sword, "The truth of our beliefs is revealed in history, within the contours of the mundane, and not through cosmic interruptions in the flow of lime. Revelation comes to us gradually, according to the methods of human knowing, and so revelation comes to us ambiguously. Certitude and clarity are achieved only in hindsight, and even then provisionally." Since it is this provisional nature of knowledge that also is the essence of scientific knowledge, religious people who find themselves able to accept Carroll's definition of revelation should have no difficulty accepting the findings of modern science--those findings reflect the will of God. They could accept the scientific facts that the universe as we know it came into being some 14,000,-000,000 years ago, and that human beings have evolved through Darwinian variation and selection along with all other creatures on Earth.

In the U.S., the wedge issue being used by fundamentalists to challenge the scientific world view is a pseudo debate over creationism and Charles Darwin's theory of the descent of man. The controversy over evolution and creationism--or its recent incarnation as "intelligent...