Science vs. Mythology: The Search for Natural Explanations and Cosmic Relationships

Brother Consolmagno,the astronomer for the Vatican, recently dismissed Creationism as a "kind of paganism" [via Technoccult], claiming that it should not be taught in schools because it harked back to the days when "nature gods" were thought to be responsible for natural events. Instead, he posits that the Christian God is a supernatural one, and that consequently religion and science have to work together to promote a kind of ethical realism about world events.

This is kind of fascinating for several reasons, not the least that it ties in with much of what I've learned this semester from two of my classes. Science and God have had a long and often troubled relationship, many of the earlier natural philosophers were concerned with either getting God and other supernatural forces out of their descriptions of reality, or were trying to tailor their natural philosophies to the Church and Scriptural doctrine, trying to describe reality in physical terms that non-the-less still had a place for God as a supreme creator. This conflict particularly came to a head over astronomy, and the question of whether the earth or sun was at the center of the Universe. Due to a Scriptural passage which suggested that God made the sun move and the earth stand still, any astronomer who suggested otherwise was at the very least excommunicated, up till the point of Newton's theory of relativity, which was partly motivated by an attempt to suggest that relative to an observer on Earth, the sun does seem to move, and in this light the Bible might still be correct despite growing scientific evidence to the contrary. Thankfully it is now the 21st Century, and it sounds like the current Vatican astronomer is willing to accept the possibility and necessity of scientific change.

Though I think it is a positive move to dismiss Creationism, as taking any myth literally may perhaps be missing the point, I feel that its comparison to paganism, and to the "days of nature gods" also might miss the point. Certainly there was a point, even up to fifty years ago, when scholars looking at ancient mythology were wont to say that all deities arose from a primitive mindset trying to explain natural phenomena in lack of more scientific explanations. This may however be an erroneous Western mindset. Certainly there are gods that have been associated with natural phenomena, take all the "thunder deities" for instance, Thor, Zeus, Indra, even Yahweh himself was originally associated with bringing destruction and power from the sky. The current view however, is not that primitive people, lacking scientific means said, that lightning is a god, or a god's weapon, but that it was symbolic of an inexplicable and transcendent power. Lightning first and foremost is awesome and deadly, and says to someone, anyone who really attends to it no matter when they live, that we are small and fragile in comparison to the vast powers that exist in the world. And so stories get created, not to explain that power, but perhaps as a way of taming it, or at the very least finding the human relationship to it. Both the god and the phenomena are suggestive of a depth of being that man, even modern man, can only approach with head bowed and a sense of creative praise about him. Scientific explanations of natural phenomena may be just as misleading as attributing these phenomena to the gods, because though science can offer what passes for a rational explanation, so that we can know what lightning "is" and "how it works," if you step outside during a storm you may still feel just as small and awed, trembling in the knees, and in need of a good story as your ancestors did thousands of years before. Imagine the kind of awe invoked by thoughts of the beginning of the world. Evolution and the Big Bang theory may be no closer to offering us a true picture of how reality began, but what they fail to offer is a human element, they fail as stories to suggest what man's relationship is to the beginning of time. The account of creation in Genesis, as well as the creation myths from around the world, may not be factual accounts of reality, but they ground mankind in reality, in particular traditions, places, behaviors, beliefs.

Science maybe able to explain how the world works, but myth offers us a reason to care, a way that we can take such grand cosmic and natural occurrences and live with them on a personal and cultural basis. It is precisely this disbelief in myths, and reliance on scientific explanations alone, that has led modern man to devalue and destroy the world.