Students’ Views

It’s summer now and I can’t seem to thoroughly appreciate the fact- it kind of snuck up on me. I don’t even know what I’m going to do now that I’m away from coursework and friends. I’m not sure if I approve of it all, actually. Maybe summer should be when everyone takes one class, just so that we can still be on campus together laughing and chatting, hanging out and making good waste of our time. Except that I’d still be bummed about all those seniors graduating and leaving us :’(

How dare they. The audacity.

Well, nothing to do about it now, eh?

I do have something I want to talk about regarding the last days of classes. In particular, the last class of my research methods course for psychology. On the last day of class, towards the end of class, a question was brought up, and suddenly I looked around and made sure I was still in the Olin building, and not in the Religion Education Center (REC), where I have my philosophy classes.

“Do you think that there is a fundamental rivalry/contention between science and religion?”

And I’m rather proud of myself for catching myself and forcing myself to remain quiet throughout the conversation. It’s something I wouldn’t have done before, and regretted horribly later.

Actually, I would compare myself to a secret agent at that moment, summing up the situation and determining where the odds were stacked and automatically discerning the correct course of action. In a split of a second I came to an understanding that can be summed up by the next paragraph.

First of all, I am the only male present. There is Dr. Desmond, the T.A. (TA’s don’t teach here, they only help the profs), and the other six students in the class. All are female. The six female students are all from the same sorority, ADPi. Furthermore, I’m in Southwestern for crying out loud. It doesn’t take a genius to predict what the majority (I say majority and not entirety only because I’m counting myself) of the class is going to have to say about this heavy question.

And sure enough, the next ten to fifteen minutes everyone agreed with each other. No, there is no contradition/contention inherent between religion and science. You can be a scientist and still consider yourself religious and believe in God. Plenty of scientists do. Science can’t answer the questions that religion tries to deal with.

Well, I wish I remembered more of the viewpoints, because there was actually some disagreement between them. But it was like republicans and democrats arguing against each other, versus me, the anarchist or socialist or something like that.

Well, just to say what’s still in my head, what I still remember thinking. You see, as far as the questions religion tries to deal with, it seems to me that religion creates those questions for itself to deal with. It’s something philosophy does a lot too, though I think theology still does it to a greater degree. What happens is eventually you start thinking about thinking. Thinking is removed from its true function, to think about the world that is actually around us. For example, the afterlife. It exists in religion to capture the mind, in the end, to control it.

One girl said something I thought was very interesting. She said that you can keep them separate, your job and your religion. When you’re at your job you are a scientist, you need evidence, you need proof and you’re a skeptic. At home you are God-loving (or fearing, whichever style you prefer) and have faith in his existence.

I had a sudden flashback to Masterpieces of Literature my freshman year. We were reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and one of the characters was a rather two-faced man. At work, where he was a receptionist or clerk or whatnot, he was cold and objective, ‘professional’. When Pip, the main character, spoke to the guy at work, the guy (let’s call him Bob) didn’t greet him as a friend, warmly, but as a customer, coldly, impersonal. Furthermore, Bob had a peculiar transformation. Pip would walk with Bob to Bob’s castle-styled house, armed with forts and whatnot (he had to protect himself from the world outside, you see, so that he could be himself inside the castle walls). As Bob was walking home Pip would see his face soften and his step change, a smile would steadily grow, his eyes would lighten. Suddenly Bob was a friend you couldn’t improve upon, he was amiable and warm and friendly, generous, considerate, etc etc.

Charles Dickens was trying to broach a specific issue. You see, with the rise of industrialization people made a move to the cities, and new kinds of jobs were created. You were no longer the craftsman, you see. Another character was a blacksmith, and guess where his forge was? The back of the house, buddy. There was no separation between work and the home to him, you see. But Bob was a clerk, he had to walk to work, he had to dress up and look ‘professional’, in other words, instead of being your job, you had to make yourself your job every day. That’s why in the mornings when Pip walked to work with Bob, Bob’s countenance and demeanor, his personality, slowly changed back to the cold and impersonal clerk the closer to work Bob got.

I kind of see that happening with this religion and scientist dilemma and the separation from work-science home-religion suggestion. And so I say there is a dilemma, people. You see, if there wasn’t, the question of whether or not there was wouldn’t exist. People have to come to some kind of resolution before they can be religious and a scientist. It doesn’t happen without people asking some questions or experiencing some kind of what we call in psychology cognitive dissonance at some point. Stephen Hawking described such people as trying to have their cake and eat it too. I agree. People have to tweak science here and religion there, or tweak themselves by putting on two masks a day, it seems.

Well, I think I need to wrap up this mess of an entry, and I’ll sum it up and the year with it by telling of a story that Dr. D. told me. You see, she had a colleague at one point who was religious and a scientist. What made her friend decide that believing in God was okay as a scientist? Well, it was an experience she had when she cut open her first human body. When she saw what was inside the human body, saw the complexity, how everything, every single tiny little thing, fit together, worked together, to make the beautiful thing that is the human body, she couldn’t help but think that something or someone had to plan it all. It couldn’t just have happened.

I find this experience a rather telling one. Deserving some rumination from whomever reads this entry. You see, I just find it poetic almost- perfect - how man could look at himself and see God.