RELIGIOUS FAITH AND THE RATIONALITY OF SCIENCE A Contribution to Zoosemiotics By Carl Christian Glosemeyer Andersen, Mag. Art.

and lecturer at The Norwegian Humanistic Academy -Nansenskolen25.05, 2013 In the last two months there has been an ongoing discourse in Norway concerning the issue religious faith and the rationality of science. The discourse started when professor Johan E. Moan, a physics, and professor Ola Didrik Saugestad, a physician, together wrote an article in Aftenposten (17.03) , a well known Newspaper, which held the title "Science opens up for God". Some days later the first of a series of contra arguments popped up in the media from atheists, physicians, novelists etc, and the debate started and ended in a cacophony of pure pro et contra arguments about faith and hard scientific facts. I have a great sense of serious representatives from natural sciences that, from time to time, want to open up to a wider debate within the humanities about fai th, science and philosophical issues. What really bothers me in this discourse is that, although I find these issues f irst and foremost as philosophical questions, I couldn't find any representative s from philosophy and the history of ideas at all. After my reading of the featured article in Aftenposten and the following critic s, a number of questions came to my mind. If we look at the European culture and our Judeo-Christian heritage, it is strik ing how many similarities we can distinguish between the Old and the New Testame nt "Creation narrative" on the one hand, and the popular contemporary cosmologic al theory of the "Big Bang" on the other. In the Old Testament we can read and hear how the World suddenly pops out of "no where" by means of God's creative words and commandments to "become and to be". And in the New Testament, in John's Gospel we are introduced to the statement th at "In the beginning was the Word ("Logos"), and the Word was with God, and the Wor d was God" until a little later in the text it is proclaimed that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us". It is quite striking that the Judeo-Christian Creation myth seems to fit hand in glove with our modern Big Bang theory. The archaic myth may perhaps have been a direct impetus for the formation of the scientific theory? In this respect it seems not to be a sharp contradiction between the Christian f aith and a scientific belief, fully in line with the authors' claim in the featu re article. Let me also add that with the Judeo-Christian Story we can find a very dynamic a nd distinct forward-looking element in our understanding of reality. These ideas have influenced Western culture to such a degree, that we take them

all for granted. Modern scientific history research and the history of ideas are totally ontologi cally based on these dynamic assumptions. And Darwin's seminal theory of evolution as well as modern, scientific cosmologi cal ideas (Big Bang) are all based on a Judeo-Christian fundamental linear perce ption of time with a beginning and an end. This not said that Darwin's theory of evolution fits particularly well into the Judeo-Christian Dogmatics! An alternative to the Big Bang principle we can trace dwelling in the the preSoc ratic philosophy of cosmology. In many ways it has some similarities with the modern scientific "Big Crunch" th eory. Here one possible scenario for this universe is the expansion of space to an ult imate point before it is reversed and collapses into a singularity in a black ho le. Then, back to scratch, it will turn into a new emergent universe, and this proce ss is likely to take place for all eternity. In a famous philosophical fragment from the preSocratic Heraclitus (540-480 b.c. ) we can read the following: "This world,- neither gods nor men have created -, is an eternal live fire that flares up according to measure ("metron") and extinguish according to measure". In the tension between the Cosmic and the Chaotic, between the ordering ("philotes") and destructive ("neikos") forces of the unive rse, the universe as a totality is expanding and decreasing in a perpetual circu lar process without beginning or end. The philosophical, archaic principle that permeates the natural philosophy of th e Old Greek preSocratic thinking up till Plato and Aristotle, is the fundamental ontological idea that "Nothing can emerge out of Nothing, but on the contrary, - out of Something (chaos) Everything comes to existence (Cosmos)". Here, as you can see, we find in germ the competing Creation myth to the Judeo-C hristian's which can be said to support the modern alternative to the Big Bang, - the before-mentioned Big Crunch theory. In the latter the passage of the physical "time-arrow" goes forward to a certain cosmic point before the arrow turns, and then the universe will shrink into a new starting point. It is worth noting that for Heraclitus neither Gods nor humans are seen as explanatory creation principles of the cosmo s. The seminal Quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg has once stated that the preSocratic philosophers of nature can be seen as the archetypal, ideol ogical precursors of our modern thermodynamic laws of the constancy and preserva tion of matter and energies in the universe. Our "own" Dr. Theol Thorleif Boman defended in 1952 his later so famous treatise "Das hebrische Denken im Vergleich mit dem griechischen" for the doctorate of theo logy. In his stydy Boman made an analytic comparative analysis of the Hebrew thought a nd the old greek philosophy and society based on an in-depth survey of the cultu

ral aspects of language. He arrived at the conclusion that the two cultures have very different ways of t hinking, - of perceptions, understanding and structuring the world. Thorleif Boman said that the differences between the two cultures' perspectives and ways of acknowledge the "world" can be restored to their different emphases of the bodily senses and sensory qualities of man within the individual culture, - in the greek society giving priority to the corporal "eye" and "sight". Within the Hebrew culture Thorleif Boman believed that it is the corporal "ear" and "the hearing" qualities that constitute the dominant sense state of existenc e. The Hebrew Culture has devised a brilliant way to deal with the living Word of G od and His voice amongst His people. The hearing sense of man and the voice of God are giving birth to a mutual profo und, dynamic worldview in which everything that happens and is going on, is base d on God's living Word and His Deed. With the Greeks however, the bodily sense is the "eye" and the "visual" percept ion, compounding the archaic basic state of existence function in the culture. While the Hebrews could be said to be "Ohrendenker", the Greeks first and foremost are "Augendenker". Emphasising the eye and the visual flair as the culture's most important basis f or the state of existence, the Greek culture has primarily the focus directed on the perception of the "object" and what is to be acknowledged. The Greeks sought to argue logically and to emphasise their search for evidence in order to convince the democratic opposing party in a subject matter, while the Hebrews, on the contrary, wanted to emphasise the art of persuasion fo r the provision of the Act. Thus, the Jewish world view is better characterised by a ceaseless "vorden" and the dynamics of "to be", because it is with our hearing sense that we most easil y can recognise movement and emergence in space and time. Vision - the eye - however, seeks rather to keep the focused "object" firmly in its grip. The marvellous invention in the renaissance of the microscope and the telescope in the West can be seen as the pure extension of our bodily senses, a continuati on of our "grip" of the world. The eye and the visual senses lead to the creation of a world view that is chara cterised by fixity, standstill and statics. In his doctoral thesis Thorleif Boman reminds us repeatedly that we should think more thoroughly of how the structuring and formation of our world-views and col lective images take place and how they can be characterised and prioritised by t he senses and sensory qualities of the individual culture. I do appreciate Thorleif Boman's fundamental philosophical analysis. In my opini on his analysis still can have a huge impact on our understanding of the complex ed variety of the specific cultures' "memes" and of the variety and peculiaritie s that characterise them. In Aftenposten's feature article the two scientific authors argue for the unique importance of the humanistic vision in Christianity, for its sense of humanity and human values.

I can in general share their view of the Judeo-Christian importance for the form ation of our basic human values, - for our ethics and morality. When the authors, Saugestad and Moan, at the same time however without any sort of doubt, refer to the Old Testament Story and proclaim that Man and Man alone i s created in the Image of God, thus emphasising the absolute uniqueness of the h uman being on Earth, - then I think they do a great mistake. The authors have chosen to perpetuate the anthropocentric world view of the Old Testament without any sort of criticism. It is exactly at this point I would like, in my zoo-semiotic analysis, to refer to Thorleif Boman's essential ideas. His previously mentioned emphasis on how the complex corporal senses of man can give rise to quite different perspectives and qualities of the world - e.g. man' s "Umwelt" - are continued, among others, in contemporary cognitive sciences suc h as psychology and ethology. These natural sciences try to make fundamental research on a variety of animal s pecies. They scrutinise the subjective phenomenal Umwelt of the specific animal, and try to map the animal's unique senses and sense organs and how these affect its dif ferent conceptions and structuring of the environment in which they live and act . Thus it isn't difficult to find modern representatives of natural sciences who e asily can put the Judeo-Christian extreme anthropocentrism in a very critical li ght. I am in this context thinking of modern biology, cognitive ethology and zoo-semi otics, all of which focus on the animals' specific cognitive abilities and condi tioning. In this respect the research on animals' Umwelten have had an almost explosive d evelopment over the past 15-20 years. There is barely a month at a time before new astonishing discoveries of the amaz ing abilities and facilities of animals are coming to light. Many of these findings show that different animal species often have great cogni tive abilities, - abilities which, only a few decades back in history, were attributed to the hu man being and the human animal alone. Today cognitive sciences, ethology and psychology, speak without any winking of an eye about "Animal thinking" and the symbolic language , the "wagging-tail" dancing, of the honey bees. The communicative abilities of honey bees, of ants and other social insects, of mammals, birds and dolphins, exhibit signs of "human" traits, signs that indicat e that a number of animal species have quite a complex "mind". Their different Umwelten are of course due to the species' specific sense organs and thus to their different abilities to interpret and map their environment, to respond to and communicate with the "world". Corvids have a sense of themselves as an individual subject and actor in the wor ld. They can form tools and make a priori thought experiments in their heads before they choose the right solutions to new tasks which they encounter along the way.

Chimpanzees, orangutans have demonstrated large multiple cognitive abilities and language skills by training and the use of American Sign Language. A dog (kollie) have learned more than 1000 words and symbolic concepts and he ca n use these symbols in his communication with his couch and other people. If we do agree with Moan's and Saugestad's claim that Christianity has meant an awful lot for the development and maintenance of the unique "human dignity" in t he Western culture, it isn't completely out of place at the same time to remind us that this extreme ly anthropocentric view of man in cosmos may have led to a fatal degradation and exploitation of other animals, plants and nature where nature as a whole should apply only as means for man's own purposes, greed and desires. In Genesis Yahweh demands Man to rule over every animal and to give name to ever ything God has created. In this respect Man reflects some of the godly power: The human ability to give name to things gives at the same time Man the power to dominate the Creation of God: "Nomen est numen"/"To Name is to Know". In this respect my counter-argument to the authors in Aftenposten could be: "Thanks" to the Judeo-Christian ethics and its one-sided emphasis on human moral values and dignity in Gods Creation this dominant perspective has influenced ou r corresponding disparagement of all other life in the wild and in nature. The unilateral biblical statement that "Man" alone is created in the Image of Go d, may have as a possible consequence human exploitation and extinction of anima l species other than ourselves, with great ecological and ethical-moral conseque nces as the final result. Is it just the human species, with its mind and soul, who can have a prospect of inheriting eternal life? Is there in the Judeo-Christian world view some place in "heaven" for the other creatures on earth? At the end of the 18th century the German philosopher Immanuel Kant has argued that "faith" and "knowledge" are, and should be, two se parate domains of our general discourse, each having their rightful position in culture and the history of ideas. Faith and science are not necessarily opposed to each other, but they should be kept apart and discussed on their own, respective terms. As Kant puts it: An equal "number" of arguments can be postulated pro et contra the belief in a c reative God of the universe. This kantian statement is exactly what can be said to classify the domain of fai th. Faith in this respect isn't opposed to any scientific progress, because they bel ong to two separate domaines in our discourse. The natural sciences are all based on the same fundamental principle of creating new hypotheses in an ongoing process and at the same time to scrutinise the pos sibility of an refutation and falsification of hypotheses, - a process in which only those hypotheses will be standing, that science hasn't yet been able to dis prove. Our scientific knowledge is first and foremost an awareness of which scientific

hypotheses that don't hold water, - the science is in this respect an aggregated collection of "non-science". The Christian mystic and mathematician Nicklaus Cusanus came in the year 1440 to the same conclusion in his famous work "De Docta Ignorantia" as Karl Popper did in his "The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959) about 500 years later. I would prefer such a scientific and non-dogmatic attitude as a clue in my "rese arch journey on Earth", rather than the constantly repeated attempts to reconcil e science and religion to a larger unit. Religious faith and scientific rationality are neither in harmony, in contradict ion or opposed to each other, and they shouldn't be mixed together to form a harmonious unit. Faith, or the lack of it, is a personal choice, - a choice which of course is entirely respectable, but only as long as the belief isn't meddling in the scientific research in such a way that it can speak of "God's particle" in quantum physics or proclaim that "the science is opening up for God".