Please forgive my reference to a statement, “Trust the Science”, that I mostly find unhelpful. Yet trust and science are profoundly relevant and practical aspects of life, whether you are a Bahá’i or not, in this period of great stress and challenge. As the prophet Isaiah wrote, “Come let us reason together.”
Religious teaching which is at variance with science and reason is human invention and imagination unworthy of acceptance, for the antithesis and opposite of knowledge is superstition born of the ignorance of man. If we say religion is opposed to science, we lack knowledge of either true science or true religion, for both are founded upon the premises and conclusions of reason, and both must bear its test.
Ábdu’l-Bahá – The Promulgation of Universal Peace
Ábdu’l-Bahá spoke the words cited above in Pittsburg in 1912, after he’d been freed from imprisonment after the Young Turk revolution in 1908. He traveled and taught in Europe and then in the United States and Canada. As the son and successor to the founder of our faith, Bahá’u’alláh, he is considered the exemplar. His clarity and depth still amazes me.
One of the key elements of the Bahá’i faith that attracted me was the need for science and religion to work in harmony. For some reason, religion and science have been set at odds with each other.
When we are told “trust the science”, many like myself find this deeply at odds with the true principles of science. In fact, it sounds vaguely religious (and not in a good way). In true and good science, we recognize the limits of our understanding at any time. We recognize that the entire foundation of our understanding might need to be revised. Rather than trusting “the” science, we trust in the process of the scientific method. We trust in honest divergent conversations and experimentation that when the time comes, we might all revise our understanding when better theories and models are discovered that match the evidence. This is the kind of science I want to trust, and I most certainly don’t want anyone forcing it on me.
The Monty Python comedy troupe has brought me great joy and laughter over the years, in this skit laughing at the incompetent priests who can’t get their lines straight and who eventually fail to torture and terrorize their victims into a confession of their sins. The comfy chair and soft pillow most emphatically did NOT work. Yet there were priests that did terrorize and torture people. I believe in religion and science. But I don’t believe in BAD religion. The Spanish Inquisition is one of many examples of BAD religion.
We might believe we are so much more advanced than the crazy priests of the Spanish Inquistion (which of course, no one expected). But humans in the twenty-first century are not above persecuting people for holding what we believe are dangerous beliefs. The Bahá’i faith, as Ábdu’l-Bahá made clear in the quote above, shows that true science and true religion depend on reason and must past the test of our reason.
This practical Bahá’i offers the practical observation to watch out for anyone triggering fear or possible violence. Good science shows fear causes the higher functioning of our brains to shut down. Take a breath. Use your brains (and new science shows that also includes the brain in your heart and the brain in your gut.) We can work it out.