Why the "Religion vs. Science" Myth Won't Go Away

Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire Ministry just recently announced a new initiate: a new website dedicated to dispelling the myth that religion is opposed to science. I like Bp. Barron; he combines a formidable intelligence with a very approachable, personable style, and it’s clear that he does his homework. So I wish his new project well and hope it has some success.

The problem with dispelling myths, however, lies precisely in the fact that they are myths. Salesmen know the truth—facts don’t sell; stories do. The most successful politicians rise to high office, not by hammering their opponents with truths, but rather by creating compelling stories and mental images which engage and attract voters.

So we know that myths are stories. What we forget is that not all stories are fiction, nor do all stories contain fictional elements. We use both myth and story to demean stories as false, of trivial value, or as mere entertainment. But stories are the most connatural human means of passing information; stories organize our worldviews and help to create communities of shared values, attitudes, and beliefs—that is, cultures. History does not become history as such until the facts of the past are organized into a meaning-full narrative. (In fact, the ancient Greek word historia [inquiry or systematic observation; body of knowledge; narrative] is the root through Latin of both story and history.) The difference between a classical author like Suetonius and a modern one like David McCullough is source citation.

(In fact, you can find some source citation in the Old Testament; e.g., 1 Kings 11:41: “Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, all that he did as well as his wisdom, are they not written in the Book of the Acts of Solomon?” They might not fly in a modern college’s history department, but hey! we’re talking fifth century BC here.)

Stories, then, aren’t false or misleading by mere definition. Ironically, such a view can only be supported by a metanarrative in which stories act as oppressive forces. Even stories that are fictional can be written or told to express higher truths; for example, the Book of Job or the parables of Jesus. It’s for this reason that St. Thomas Aquinas argued the parabolic sense of Scripture was contained in the literal sense (Summa Theologiae I, Q. 1, A. 10 ad 3).

However, stories can be and often are used to mislead others, usually because the storyteller themself is misled, but sometimes because the storyteller has an ulterior motive for their deception. And it’s because stories exercise the imagination and help to form communities of believers that false and misleading stories become so dangerous.

The myth of religion as an opponent to science is not “based on” historical facts. Rather, the myth is constructed logically prior to the facts; in turn, it creates a narrative frame through which cherry-picked lesser stories—the death of the Alexandrian Neoplatonist scholar Hypatia, the burning of the Library of Alexandria, the death of Giordano Bruno, the trial of Galileo Galilei—can be re-read to support it. (I’ve used the concept of the narrative frame before in discussing the “progressive pope” myth.) In doing so, the narrative frame eliminates or diminishes details of the stories that undermine or contradict the myth, exaggerating by isolation the details which support it.

For instance, Hypatia was very popular among Alexandrian Christians, many of whom were her students. Her death, according to the earliest source (Socrates Scholasticus), had nothing to do with her paganism or the content of her teaching, but rather with her supposed role in a dispute between the Christian Roman governor, Orestes, and the bishop, Cyril, over the treatment of Alexandrian Jews. Even before the rise of Christianity, Alexandria had a reputation for turning minor controversies into bloody mob violence. But the “science vs. religion myth” favors a much later source (John of Niklu), who tried to justify Hypatia’s death by trashing the characters of Orestes and Cyril.

Narrative frames like “the progressive pope” and “Christians hate science” persist because myths create communities which mutually reinforce the frames. Facts don’t destroy communities; only a more compelling story can draw a person from one community to another. We Christians do have a more compelling story; however, it has suffered degradation and fracture over the last 500-plus years, for reasons more complex than can be summarized by a thoughtless reference to “the triumph of Science.” Science qua science had little to do with it.

Not all atheists partake of the religion-versus-science myth; nor is the myth necessary to atheism. But it is a necessary component of scientism, which over time has become less a philosophical position and more a gnostic proto-religion, complete with ur-prophets and ur-priests. And some Christians feed into the myth by insisting on quasi-scientific notions like young-earth creationism, geocentrism, and even the flat-earth theory, none of which need be true for the gospel message to be true.

What we need is not another website. Rather, what we really need is another series like Bp. Barron’s excellent Catholicism series, which puts the development of science back in its proper historical contexts and gives Christians their proper credit for contributions to its development (along with apologies for those instances when Christians opposed it). It would be best if such a series could obtain time slots in a major network reputed to be biased leftward, such as ABC, CBS, or NBC, as was given Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s remake of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. At a bare minimum, though, it should be available for purchase by parishes for their catechetical resources.

But even a full-scale media blitz retelling the story of science from our perspective won’t destroy the religion-versus-science myth. The myth persists because it nourishes the scientism devotées’ conviction that they are brighter, more rational, and more moral just by dint of their atheism than we backward, ignorant faith-heads are. Facts don’t sell. Stories do.