Faith and Science

’Faith is as powerful a force as science...but far more dangerous’ -

I was struck by the above comment as I was reading ‘Voyager’, one of the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. It was slide so innocuously into the text, that you could very easily let your eyes slide right over it. I had done exactly that and had to reread what I had just read in order to see it REALLY said what I thought it had! Claire who had travelled in time  from the 1960s in Boston to a homestead in North Carolina just prior to the American Revolution, was commenting on the variety of faiths she found there and the dissension caused between them: Anglicans, Catholics, Puritans and Dissenters. It was a time of strong religious beliefs and loyalties, a time when what you believed was more important than life itself and when belonging to the wrong Protestant sect was almost as bad as being a papist in the early colonies. She was, of course, comparing this faith in her own mind with the power of science almost 200 years later that she had left behind.

 It is now almost 275 years since the time whenClaire made that statement. And I don’t see that we have gotten any wiser in that time.  Despite the scientific studies that have been done, we still hear that ‘Global Warming is fake news’. The fury of nature that has been unleashed on many parts of the globe, from hurricanes, forest fires, mud slides, drought and extreme heat/cold have been touted by the religious right as the acts of a vengeful God because of humanity’s sin. 

It is time for us to say that climate change is real. It is time for all faith communities to add their support to saving the viability of human life on this planet. This is undoubtably unpopular with big business, with Wall Street, with those who are polluting the environment as they look for the cheaper way to manufacture and produce goods. It will undoubtedly cost the industrialists money with less profits being earned and increased production costs, and also affect the workers with jobs lost due to the changing skills require by the workplace and the retraining required. However when we look at the alternative, a planet that will no longer support human life, I can’t see that we have an option.

Those religious groups that oppose the idea of global warning, fall back on the verse from Genesis 1.26-27  Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ as saying that humans have the God-given right to do whatever they wish to the rest of creation.

Add to this their oft-repeated belief that the end of the world is imminent when the ‘believers’ will taken up into heaven, and one can see why the religious right doesn’t feel they should do anything at all.

Looking at one of the new idiomatic translations of the bible, The Message by Eugene Peterson, we find these same verses deliver a very different message, but one more clearly in tune with the chaos in the world today.“God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature so they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.”

If we believe that we made in the image of God, then we must also believe that we are called on to reflect the nature of God and assume the responsibilities given to us. Do we really believe that God wants to see living creatures disappear from this planet? Believing that climate change is fake news says that we do! What do your actions say about you?