My magisterium is bigger than yours
As is well known, Stephen Jay Gould offered ‘the principled resolution of supposed “conflict” or “warfare” between science and religion’ in his short book Rocks of Ages.
No such conflict should exist because each subject has a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority—and these magisteria do not overlap (the principle that I would like to designate as NOMA, or “nonoverlapping magisteria”).
The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for starters, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty).
I’ve always disliked that formula; I disliked the book when it came out. Here’s one reason.
Gould treats the two ‘magisteria’ as if they were equal – ‘the net of science covers’ and ‘the net of religion extends over’ sounds as if they’re doing more or less the same kind of work. But that’s wrong. Science is the best and only way to explore nature, while religion is not the best and only way to explore moral meaning and value.
Religion is actually not a very good way to do either one – it tends to be misleading, it tends to be irrelevant, it’s often just plain wrong. The magisterium isn’t really a magisterium. The church has its ‘teachings,’ as it’s always reminding us when they conflict with equality legislation, but its teachings are…not really teachings.
No, they are not really teachings.
Really, the idea that they are teachings (rather than, for example, slogans) is best described as a lie.
Or is that overreaching, again?
If nobody had ever come up with the idea that there is a spirit world, and the derivative of that: there is a Great Spirit which created everything, knows everything and can do anything, we would still be able to derive an ethics and morality without it. There are schools of philosophers that have done it. Mill as I recall derived something like Christianity’s golden rule from a couple of axioms. Rationalism (call it science if you will) can thus commit lese majeste in religion’s magisterium, but the converse is not the case at all.
Theism is useless at explaining what science explains. Compare Intelligent Design with NeoDarwinism and little more need be said. ID generates no fresh hypothese, and ND generates them by the thousand. Another trouble with theism is that it can so easily turn upon itself: critical reading of the Bible by theists in a context of sectarian theological disputation blew the Catholic Church apart in the Reformation, and led on to rationalism and the Enlightenment. This is still happening amongst theists the world over.
Scientific disputes are more easily resolved, and have not to date led to civil wars. Religion vs religion has led to plenty.
I have some Jack Handy-style questions about Gouldian geography. How many magesteria are there? Are they all separated, or are some of them suburbs of the others? (The Land of Comedy is probably the sewer beneath them all.)
Also, who draws the borders between the magesteria, and how? Suppose we say that these are legitimate and separate magesteria, just because that’s how it ought to be regarded. In that case, it means the Values Magesteria is in charge. Suppose we say that domains of discussion are, strictly speaking, just facile inventions for the sake of etiquette. When you get down to brass tacks, there are no separate domains of discussion, there’s just the big world of stuff. But that would imply that the Facts Magesteria is in charge.
Put that way, since Gould endorses NOMA, it implies that Gould put the Values people in charge. He also, unfortunately, let Religion have a coup over the kingdom. That’s not very nice of him.
I think that Gould sometimes catches a bad rap. It is implied, with delight among the religious and with despair among the rational, that he was assigning, to religion, dominion over moral meaning and value. He asserted no such thing. I didn’t read Gould’s book – only his 1997 essay – but that includes this:
As a moral position (and therefore not as a deduction from my knowledge of nature’s factuality), I prefer the “cold bath” theory that nature can be truly “cruel” and “indifferent”—in the utterly inappropriate terms of our ethical discourse— because nature was not constructed as our eventual abode, didn’t know we were coming (we are, after all, interlopers of the latest geological microsecond), and doesn’t give a damn about us (speaking metaphorically). I regard such a position as liberating, not depressing, because we then become free to conduct moral discourse—and nothing could be more important—in our own terms, spared from the delusion that we might read moral truth passively from nature’s factuality.
In trying to confront religious hostility to science, Gould may have been too conciliatory, but it is not true that he conceded morality to religion.
Benjamin: My third-hand understanding of Hegelian dialectics puts the supernatural and the natural into a lopsided version of that classic relation. That is, one cannot conceive of the first without automatically creating the idea of the other.
There are many members of other species on Earth (eg my late canine friend Charlie) who appear to take everything for granted just as-it-is and who display no awareness or concept of anything beyond or outside it. So while being within reality and relating to it constantly, they are apparently not conscious of it in the sense of mentally discriminating between it and anything other than it. There could also possibly be supernatural beings in some supernatural universe who have no idea of the natural (as we refer to it). But the idea of ‘material’ immediately suggests that of its opposite: non-material or immaterial – call it what you will. And the idea of the natural implies the non-natural, of which the supernatural is I suppose the only sub-class.
It follows that there can only be two Gouldian magisteria.
We could also talk of the rational magisterium vs the irrational one, with science included within the rational. But I don’t think Gould would have liked that scheme of things.
The magisteria that includes religious questions would also include questions like ‘Why did Robinson Crusoe find only one footprint on the beach?’, ‘Who’d win in a fight – Batman or Superman?’ or ‘If Mickey’s a mouse, Donald’s a duck and Pluto’s a dog, what the hell is Goofy?’.
Nicely said, Ophelia.
Niceley said shatterface…
NOMA fails because the authority of religion over value and meaning generally depends on claims of fact. I.e. the authority of Christianity rests on the claim that there is a God and we can know how he wants us to behave. Even if you argue that science can never disprove it, it’s still a claim of fact. There is no way to separate the realm of meaning from the realm of fact.
I think we need to be much more critical of Gould’s idea than that. The word ‘magisterium’ has its origin and appropriate place in religion, especially with respect to the Roman Catholic Church. It speaks of its authority to teach, and to determine what is taught. The magisterium is actually seen as a form of authority which is greater than and more important than the truth.
Science does not have a magisterium, and nothing in science is completely exempt from question and re-examination. That is why science deals with truth and religion does not.
As for Gould’s idea that the magisterium of religion – which itself is a very questionable idea, since each religion or religious sect must have its own magisterium – extends to questions of value; this is simply a non-starter. As has been pointed out again and again, religious beliefs are subject to moral evaluation, and where they fail they are discarded, except for the most extreme authoritarian forms of religion. In the latter case, immoral consequences do not subvert god or the gods; instead, it simply corrects our warm fuzzy notions of the gods, who turn out to be much less humane than we are. The wretched catholics show this all the time. When the choice has to be made, the best bet is to choose humanity, every time. Gods are the most awful shits!
Good point, Eric. Mind you, this wasn’t meant to be an exhaustive post on NOMA – a magisterial one, so to speak – just an observation on one aspect of it. One reason I dislike it.
But you’re right, the word ‘magisterium’ is another reason.
Kenneth – well, yes he did. That doesn’t mean he didn’t say other things in other places, but for instance in the passage I quoted (which is intact), he did indeed assign dominion over moral meaning and value to religion. He could and should have worded his formula more carefully, and he didn’t. Saying religion has “a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority,” and then saying “the net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value,” does indeed concede morality to religion.
Maybe “spiritual” rather than “religion”–could be Gould just wasn’t a master of his domains.
I submit that acknowledging religions’ claim to authority over morality and values is not the same as accepting that claim, and Gould made it clear that he, personally, did not.
Clearly, Stephen Jay Gould was a founding accommodationist, and it’s fair to ask where that has gotten us. But appeasement is not concession. I think NOMA may have provided to religious moderates a tool with which to confront creationism, although it may also have provided them a shield from the light of truth.
Where Gould, in my opinion, may have seriously erred was in suggesting that science can contribute nothing to moral philosophy. Depends on whether we take science as a method or a body of knowledge.
Acknowledging religions’ claim to authority over morality and values is not the same as accepting that claim but it’s pretty close to it. In any case, Gould didn’t just acknowledge religions’ claim, he gave them what they claimed; he said they had expertise in the subject. He said more than he should have, more than was true, and his adding that it’s not his personal thing was inadequate.
I was a big fan of Gould’s when the book came out; I rushed to read it, and was shocked, and very annoyed. My opinion of him sank drastically. That business of handing meaning and morality over to religion was one of the weights on my opinion.
I don’t understand the word “teachings” as having some moral meaning. Isn’t it just what is taught?
Worthless, mostly, and almost certainly false, but still teachings.
I think two meanings of “acknowledge” religion’s claim are being conflated in the above discussion.
There’s “acknowledge” in the sense of “recognize as legitimate” and “acknowledge” as in “We have received your letter”.
Benjamin: for your geography question, you might like this quote from The Lost World:
“Now, down here in the Mato Grosso”–he swept his cigar over a part of the map–“or up in this corner where three countries meet, nothin’ would surprise me.”
Yes but the poxy ol’ church has been using it as if it did have moral weight – you know, equality legislation must not be allowed to challenge “church teachings.” Horrible self-important bullying. Ugh.
I’ve found a NOMA map!
http://hownottowinawar.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/the-geography-of-noma/
Ha! Another Chinese encylopedia. Very droll.
I think you are not nearly shrill enough, OB. Gould got this completely wrong. None of the religions have any ‘teaching authority’ about ‘questions of moral meaning’. See, of course, Euthyphro. On the other hand, the sciences of anthropology, textual criticism, and archaeology can tell us lots about when and why particular tribes invented supernatural ‘authorities’ to give backing to the ‘moral meaning’ the tribal elders found to their liking. Such as ‘keep the priests of YHWH in business, hang on to your property, and keep your women subordinate’, which is what the so-called ‘1o Commandments’ say.