Between science and religion: an opportunity issue. The reasons for a postmodern existence

7/28/2019 Between science and religion: an opportunity issue. The reasons for a postmodern existence

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Between science and religion: an opportunity issue. The reasons for a postmodern

existence.

Giovanni Schiava

This article has been awarded the Italian

NATIONAL AWARD OF PHILOSOPHY, 2013 (Certaldo)


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Between science and religion: an opportunity issue. The reasons for a postmodern

existence.

Giovanni Schiava

A rather simple and non-trivial answer

I think I have solved a major philosophical problem: the struggle between science and

religion1... Except I do not believe there are major philosophical problems to be solved, as

much as debates on different ideas which, if open to dialectics, can serve those who ask

for them. The question is: why is science constantly gaining ground on religion? The

answer is rather simple and not trivial: because science offers more opportunities to man's

ambitions and his possibilities of achievement. The answer may be plain to see but

perhaps too obvious to be so crucial. Both science and religion cling to their respective

ideas that are believed to be univocal. In the following pages I will attempt to clarify the

premises of my argument: a long and strictly philosophical, although clear, digressionwill be made. It will only apparently move away from the topic of the article, but would

certainly prove useful to the understanding and justification of my proposal.

The metaphysical mindset

I believe that to this day, and I could not tell since when, we Westerners have had a

mindset that Gianni Vattimo and Richard Rorty2

defined as a "metaphysical mindset."

"Metaphysical mindset" generally indicates that way of being and seeing the world that

still belongs to us. However, if we are not able to separate ourselves from it, to look at itfrom a distance, we would not be able to acknowledge it. In other words, to understand it

and live it as "awareness" it is necessary to change and re-describe ourselves as well as

our vision of the world. The metaphysical mindset contains the traditional distinction

1 I have borrowed this sentence from the Austrian philosopher K.R. Popper: "I think I have solved a major philosophicalproblem: the problem of induction" in G. Reale, D. Antiseri, Il pensiero occidentale dalle origini ad oggi, La Scuola, Brescia 1992,

vol. 3., p. 743.

2 All the major bibliographical references for this article are to be found in some works (footnoted) of the Italian philosopherGianni Vattimo and the American Richard Rorty.


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between subject and object, between a knowing subject and a known object. The

metaphysical mindset believes in a reality that exists outside those who perceive and

know it; it believes in the existence of things as they are known and described, regardlessof who knows and describes them; it believes that things exist "objectively", despite the

subject that describes them. The computer on which this article is written is what it is not

because it is me who describes it, denotes it, and makes it what it is; it will still be the

same object even if all mankind and myself disappear from the universe at this very

moment. This is what the metaphysical mindset thinks. It is the common sense mindset,

because it is traditionally and culturally rooted, because it is what we are made of.

Changing this mindset means changing the very idea of man and becoming, perhaps, what

Nietzsche used to define as the Superman or Beyond-Man, or at least anything else that

man is not now. Why call it "metaphysical mindset"?

From Plato on, metaphysics has been interpreted as the reality of essences, the Absolute

Reality, the true reality beyond sensible appearances. If the things we normally perceive

keep changing, there will nonetheless be an ultimate foundation that is unchangeable,

incorruptible, eternal and always identical to itself: the essences of things, generally

known as "truth." We are born and we die but the essences remain unabashedly identical

to themselves. The Absolute is the essence among essences without which nothing would

be. Plato identified it in the Absolute Idea; religions in the gods or God. The concept of

metaphysics as we understand it today is ascribable to its first Western theorist, Plato,

who clearly divided a Sensible world from a Supersensible one, life on earth from the

afterlife. However, I would push the concept of "metaphysical mindset", seen as

humankind's attitude to seek stability and certainties as forms of guidance, back in time.

As I have mentioned before, I cannot indicate a specific time for when this need becomes

stronger, but it certainly coincides with the development of man's sensitivity andintelligence which renders him more vulnerable to the inconstancies of life.

Whatever the case, from the existence of certainties, until their absolutization into eternal

essences, it has developed what many psychologists and philosophers have defined as

"objectifying thought". The thought, our thought, creates the external reality, the objects

and things; it makes us believe in the objective existence of everything that is "out there",

using Rorty's expression that clearly conveys the idea. The metaphysical mindset we

speak of today is our normal and common mindset. It perceives things existing in itself,

existing as we see them without taking ourselves into account, who see things the way we


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do. According to the metaphysical mindset there is "out there" a world that exists

objectively: its knowledge is nothing more than an understanding of the object as it is. In

any case, the world would be that way even if it were not us to get to know it. This is anidea of reality that separates the knowing subject from the known object and makes them

two quite distinct realities.

Metaphysical philosophers, too metaphysical

As already said, the metaphysical mindset belongs to us. It was only thanks to the

nineteenth- century philosopher Nietzsche that the "awareness" of this distinction has

emerged, together with the will to change. This will has not yet been fulfilled. In order for

it to become established it will need a long period of maturation. Even those philosophers

who have analysed it and acknowledged it (according to a 'non-metaphysical mindset' it

would be more appropriate to say that they have proposed it) are, still, too metaphysical.

From the medieval age, the need to move the existential line from God to Man has

become stronger. From Saint Thomas who used human reason to prove faith and obtained

a boomerang effect since his considerations offered more possibilities to reason; through

Gugliemo d'Ockham, an ante litteram Kantian, who moves reason away from the realm of

faith conferring it more autonomy; through the renaissance animus encompassed in thesentence "man controls his own destiny"; and the decisive turning point of 'I think

therefore I am' by Descartes for whom thinking justify itself; we, finally, get to Kant who,

with his philosophy of transcendentalism, brings out the contradictions in the dispute

between metaphysics and science, imbuing humankind with the revolutionary conviction

of being 'the conditions of possibility of the known objects', since the objects we know are

what they are because of our own way of knowing them, of our a priori forms of

knowledge. There has clearly been a progressive strengthening of the autonomy of human

reason with respect to God. This reaches its climax with Hegel who, interpreting the

Kantian transcendentalism in his own way, transformed reason in Absolute, the only

possible reality: everything that is real is rational and everything that is rational is real.

This delusion of grandeur infected Nietzsche, anti-Hegelian for his philosophical spirit

but a true Hegelian for his spirit of power.

The great nineteenth century philosopher, Heidegger, defined Nietzsche as 'the last

metaphysical' because despite the fact that he was the first one to turn things around, to

show things from a different perspective, to denounce the false existence of all essences,


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of all the truths and of objective knowledge, he used the very same categories typical of

the metaphysical mindset to conduct his own battle. For the same reason we cannot define

ourselves non-metaphysical, Nietzsche, a century ago, did not have the linguistic andcultural means, as well as the mindset, to propose something totally different. He talks

about God, Apollo and Dionysius in order to identify two possible dimensions of

humanity: the rational and irrational. He talks about Will to Power as if it were a superior

entity in order to offer man a new interpretative spirit. Allow me to dare: that his tendency

to go beyond the possible categories of interpretation he had at his disposal was what

drove him mad cannot be ruled out.3 After all, he was criticizing, fiercely attacking, that

metaphysical mindset that was part of himself, taking himself to self destruction. Even

Heidegger, who cherished Nietzsche's lesson, was too metaphysical. To some extent, he

was even more metaphysical than Nietzsche. The theoriser of the modern Being,4

impeccable analyst of the twentieth-century, revises the category of Being avoiding, with

different tricks, the out of fashion absoluteness of the Hegelian Spirit in order to

re-propose a metaphysics imbued with existentialism. In talking about Being, Heidegger

recycles terminologies, categories and ways of thinking typical of the most ancient

metaphysical mindset, the one pre-dating Plato and still in use nowadays. Heidegger's

metaphysics lies not in what he said as much as in the language he used to say it. When he

talks about Being, Being-in-time, Being-in-itself and about truth as a revelation of being,

he uses the typical language of metaphysics. I do not believe that Heidegger was thinking

of a Being which could disappear from the face of the earth when all humankind

disappeared. Heidegger was thinking of a Being that would survive humankind. In this, he

was metaphysical, more than Nietzsche. The same could be said for our philosopher

Emanuele Severino. Having being impressed by his logic and dialectics, I can repeat what

Gadamer said when attending Heidegger's lectures: "he opened your eyes [...]. WhenHeidegger taught, you could see things in front of you, you could almost seize them".5 I

have experienced this first hand when listening to Severino: I had the impression of seeing

and touching the Being. However, after I woke up from that injection of logic, I had to

work hard to resume my reason and to admit that it had been a real experience of the

3 On the nature of Nietzsche's madness in the last period of his life there are still different opinions, especially on whether itwas organic or psychological.4 The philosophy of Heidegger and Severino, who will be discussed later, pivot on the Being, a term used to express the

meaning of 'being'.5 G. Reale, D. Antiseri, Il pensiero occidentale dalle origini ad oggi, ed. cit., vol. 3., p. 453.


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Being as thought: the thought that talks about itself and justifies itself through its logic:

the equivalent of Descartes 'I think, therefore, I am'. Heidegger and Severino seem to have

learnt Nietzsche's lesson on 'awareness', on the distinction of the metaphysical mindset,and attempt to go beyond it in order to save what can be saved. Both philosophers state

that there is a need to go back to philosophy before Plato, before he invented the

metaphysics that differentiates between the subject and the object. It is a recuperation of

the past; it is a trick to save the Absolute, a certainty that transcends individual men and

whose finitude it could survive. A metaphysical certainty altogether, since it offers a

stable and guaranteed point of reference. However they twist it, both philosophers look

like old metaphysicians who try to change things by attempting to remove some

traditional categories away from the destructive vortex of nihilism. They too, like

Nietzsche, are metaphysical, still too metaphysical. In general terms, almost all nineteenth

century philosophy seems to be searching a way out from Nietzsche's nihilism. In a way

or another, they do not want to resign themselves to the total annihilation of the past but

want to save all that they cherish the most, in a nostalgic and existential manner.

Not even Rorty and Vattimo, the two philosophers we had taken as reference point in this

long digression on the metaphysical mindset, escape this fate.

Richard Rorty is perhaps the first one to consciously propose a mindset opposite to that of

metaphysics; an alternative that he refers to as 'ironic': "The situation - Rorty explains - is

that of those who are never quite able to take themselves seriously because they are

always aware that the terms in which they describe themselves are subject to change,

always aware of the contingency and fragility of their final vocabularies, and thus of their

selves".6

Farsighted and enlightening except that he too was tied to tradition, to his

formative tradition of the philosophy of language. According to Rorty, man does not stand

on fixed and stable categories; he changes just the way everything does. The problem isthat Rorty ascribes exclusively to language the formation and the changes of man. Each of

us is the way we are because we are shaped by our language or, like Rorty said, by our

own final vocabulary. It is not clear why he had to reduce all that man is to language,

without including in what shapes man every other life experiences: art, music, lovers'

gaze, pain and joy. 'The idea that human beings are simply incarnated vocabularies'7

6 R. Rorty, La filosofia dopo la filosofia, Editori Laterza, Bari, 2003, p.907 Ibidem, p. 107


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suggests a metaphysical mindset; it does not leave other possibilities open, it bans every

other possible experience, falling once again into a fixed and univocal reference, the only

and indisputable reference, the only means through which reality can be interpreted, thebest one.

An even more peculiar case is represented by the father of Italian hermeneutics and of the

so- called 'weak thought'. Vattimo is an excellent critic of the metaphysical mindset, a

brilliant illustrator of its vicissitudes. Despite exposing, in public, the metaphysical

mindset, he reevaluates in private its most existentialist content. Vattimo states: "Having

left behind the metaphysical claim to objectivity, today none should be able to say 'God

does not exist' [...] What, I believe, can be said in non-metaphysical thinking is that a great

part of the theoretical and practical conquests of reason in modernity, up to the rational

organization of society, to liberalism and democracy, is rooted in the Judaeo-Christian

tradition and cannot be conceived outside it [...] 'To grasp' the rule of the process in which

we are implicated does not mean to look at it objectively and to demonstrate it as uniquely

true: this is why one speaks here of interpretation.8 Vattimo openly underlines the

impossibility to take the distance from the metaphysical mindset without avoiding the

inheritance of interpretative tools and canons: for the same reason why one cannot say

that 'God exists' one cannot say 'God doesn't exist'. We do not have an objective

knowledge that can tell us how things out there really are. Similarly, in private, the

anti-metaphysical philosopher addresses God and recite his prayers to him: "Religion has

always implied a sort of dependence, something that I myself continue to perceive [...]

This is, therefore, a creature feeling; I depend on it and I cannot avoid depending on it."9

Vattimo's religious formation shows itself throughout his life through ups and downs. He

is a man who has dedicated all his youth to God. Who has dialogued with God over the

years. He has addressed God in his most difficult times. God has been his partner andsupporter in his most painful experiences. This man cannot, therefore, erase his sense of

God and of sacred things suddenly. It would be like suppressing a consistent part of

himself. We are what we have been, we are what we have lived, thought, seen and loved.

When a beloved person dies we feel, at first, incapable of perceiving the sense of reality. It

does not make any sense to us that that person does no longer exist, because that person is

8 G. Vattimo, Credere di credere, Garzanti, Milano, 1998, pp. 66-67.9 R. Rorty, G. Vattimo, Il futuro della religione. Solidariet, carit, ironia, (ed. by Santiago Zabala), Garzanti, Milano, 2005, p.84.


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and always will be a part of ourselves. That person has contributed to our formation and

self-modification and she/he has become a part of ourselves. The same can be said of

God.As can be seen, even if for existential reasons, in Vattimo God and the Absolute reappear

'outside the window' and he makes a honest attempt to bring them in the private sphere.

A metaphysical science, too metaphysical

I will now attempt to go back, step by step, to the main topic shown in the title of this

essay. All the philosophers mentioned in the previous sub-chapter have developed their

philosophy from the awareness that: "[...] the objective world order has fallen to pieces

both because the traditional realistic image of knowledge (according to which the mind is

a mirror faithfully reflecting things as they really are 'out there') did not stand up to

philosophical critique, and because the will to power has established itself as the sole

essence of techno-science, so that if there is a world order, it is produced by man, by his

intellect or praxis".10

The world as we know it is our 'creation', our attempt to organise a space in which we

could put into effect actions, do things: this seems today the most useful and appropriate

proposal that we have.

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Not everybody will agree, but between the destructive andconstructive traits of nihilism we should start to focus on the second one. Rather than

crying on what is not anymore or nostalgically and existentially trying to save what can be

saved, it would be more appropriate to evaluate what is left and which new things can be

proposed. If philosophy has always been into the heart of the matter, science seems to

proceed without a collective awareness. Many scientists do not consider having or not an

objective knowledge as a problem: to them the objective knowledge is a certainty. Even

though science's methodological approach leaves no doubt on the falsifiability of nature,

as K. Popper underlines, scientists believe (privately and in public) that science discloses

the world in the exact same way it is out there and not in the way we construct it following

opportunity and usefulness criteria. Emanuele Severino writes: "It is obvious that

mountains are moved today by the hypothesis of science. However, the power we

experience is not the truth. Science itself recognises it when it considers itself as a

10 G. Vattimo, Credere di credere, ed. cit., p.84.

11 Already in the first half of the nineteenth century, the American pragmatism of W. James and of J. Dewey had transformedthese ideas in philosophical doctrines.


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'hypothetical-deductive' knowledge, always falsifiable.12

The metaphysical mindset

which shapes us, does not spare us in our judgement on science, nor does it spare those

scientists who appeals to the objective truths of science. The present debate betweenevolutionism and creationism, between supporters of Darwin's scientific theory and the

supporters of a religious dogma of a creator God, looks more like a discussion between

metaphysics and therefore between people who want to be absolutely right, rather than

between men who are interested in proposing their own idea for a useful and rich of

opportunities debate.13

There are scientists, unfortunately quite a few, that I have defined

as ignorant14 because they ignore the real nature of what they do: they do not reveal truths,

they propose ideas of a world to be fulfilled. These ideas are accepted or rejected

according to what opportunities they offer.

Between science and religion

It is clear from what has been already said that every aspect of man's life has its own

ontological validity, a word that is more metaphysical than ever. It gives us, metaphysical,

way too metaphysical, an idea of how every cultural, existential and emotional

manifestation of man has its own reason. Every aspect of man expresses a part of the

meaning of man and of his world, and one aspect is not more real than the others until itdoes disappear or it modifies itself to become something different. This modification

happens inside that dynamic and dialectical process that is life as we know it, as we

'create' it. Religion and science are two of man's dimensions present in his life, sometimes

more sometimes less, according to the desires and occasions that arise. Claiming that

religion tells lies and science tells the truth, or vice versa, is a dialectical attempt for them

to overpower one another in order to have their way. It is a dialectical attempt that can

only be more successful in changing and modifying man if it becomes a dialogue and a

12 E. Saverino,Ma la scienza non offre verit, Corriere della Sera, 13 August 2005.13 The diatribe that, in the last few years, has animated the United States, with civil and political effects, involves theologians,

philosophers and above all scientists (Richard Dawkins, L'illusione di Dio. Le ragioni per non credere, Mondadori, Milano, 2007).

This article of mine has been partially inspired by this diatribe, not so much to put pressure on the creationists (it is not in my

intention, nor in my possibilities) as to summon to their responsibilities those scientists who to the metaphysical reasons of

creationists oppose the 'truth' of science, presenting themselves as metaphysical. It is also necessary to intervene in defence ofthe scientific theories and of the freedom to be atheist that has been testified by the evolutionary scientist Dawkins, often

subjected to violent and unjustified attacks.

14 G. Schiava, La scienza ignorante. Critica allo scientismo persistente (http://www.girodivite.it/La-scienza-e-ignorante-Critica.html).
http://www.girodivite.it/La-scienza-e-http://www.girodivite.it/La-scienza-e-http://www.girodivite.it/La-scienza-e-http://www.girodivite.it/La-scienza-e-


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debate sincere and available: an availability that increases when facing the rejection of a

metaphysical mindset and the acceptance of being always falsifiable, open to change.

Therefore, between science and religion it is a matter of opportunity. None of them statesthe real truth but each of them contribute to the change of man and of universe. The

tendency towards one or the other is subject to personal, private, and public causes. It is

because of the opportunities they offer men and humankind according to their attitudes

and will that men become closer to one rather than the other or make formidable

compromises.

Darwin proposed his evolutionary theory to replace creationism. It was first accepted by

few, then by many; today it is perhaps accepted by the majority. The parameter of

usefulness is not an already given one, there is not a pre-existing and eternal range to

which always refer. It is the proposal itself, in this case Darwin's evolutionism, to supply

with a new sense of usefulness: for example, the possibility to compile a biological

history of humankind extremely useful to modern scientific research, but less useful to

ancient men lacking with scientific research in a modern sense. How many proposals

made centuries ago and similar to today scientific theories are now forgotten because they

were useless? Democritus' atomic theory was very useful to him and to his followers as a

form of philosophy of life but it never had the same success as the atomic theory which in

the nineteenth century generated the atomic energy. What I am trying to say is that the

proposals made by men are proportional to their interests and to their possibilities, within

a specific culture. Galileo's experimental methodology on which modern science is based,

in developing new interests and new human aspirations, show a will of adapting the

speculative mind to the desire of controlling the world in a more direct way. This could

happen at the end of medieval times, when more autonomy to reason was recognised

together with the possibility of interpreting the world according to its own canons and notto the obligatory canons of religion. Moving to the field of religion, we will find the very

same opportunistic logic. Christ proposed eternal salvation to everyone who would

convert to the laws of God. He was first listened by few, then by many and finally by the

whole Western world. Which opportunities was this man offering? Eternal salvation,

beatitude. Today, for the opposite process, many people find science more useful than

religion, thanks to the opportunities it offers. A science that does not shy from promising

to find an answer to the human desire of eternal salvation. For this reason, it is more

difficult to believe in God. However, there are men who, among the different


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opportunities they see, value more spirituality and everything that allows them to develop

it, because it gives them more existential possibilities. Some of them cannot give up

religion because they can find in God a stable and protective interlocutor, almost a realperson who they can talk to during hard times. If we add the sense of authority, a

metaphysical residue, which many find advantageous hanging on to; or the difficulty in

taking the distance from who gives a sense to their own life, one can understand why God

still offers a lot to men. Science does not give, at the moment, stable guarantees for the

future; on the contrary, it sometimes creates anxiety, but certainly, in competing with

God, it supplies more opportunities to control the instability of life and to create life itself,

a power around which lies all the future of mankind.

Giovanni Schiava

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Between science and religion: an opportunity issue. The reasons for a postmodern existence