Humpback Whales and not knowing...

Over New Year's we visited Maui with my parents and my Aunt.  One day we went out on a whale watch on a sturdy catamaran.  The seas were a bit rough and choppy, but the weather was beautiful.  It was roughly 75 degrees with minimal cloud cover.  As we headed out to sea one of the captains was telling us all about Humpback whales and what we might see today.  As he was explaining how they swim all the way down from Alaska one Humpback full breached ahead of the boat.  If you don't know what that means it is when the whale jumps and its entire body emerges out of the water.  Apparently, it is quite rare that they do this sort of breach.  It is an amazing sight to see an animal that large and powerful thrust itself out of the ocean and into the air. 

            Someone on the boat asked a great question at this point, "Why do the whales do that?"  Clearly they need to breathe, but why not just come up for a quick breath?  Why waste all that extra energy?  The answer from the "whale expert" on board was a great one, a simple but profound answer that we do not hear enough.  "We do not know."  He offered many possible reasons that marine-biologists thought might be accurate, but they just were not sure.  They theorizes the full breach may have something to do with marking territory, mating or just simply playing; but in reality those were only reasonable theories.    But animals don't use reason, they use instinct.  So whatever scientists may come up with as a plausible reason for the full whale breach is only reasonable to humans, not whales. They may not even have a reason.  Instinct isn't reasonable, it is a reaction, nothing more. 

            There is a lot of humility in saying, "I don't know."  It is something that all people should be willing to say more often.  But we also need to be careful.  This "whale expert" being unsure about why humpbacks full breach doesn't mean that marine biologists don't know anything about humpback whales, it means that there are certain nuances that they can't explain with any certainty.  We ought not mistake not knowing everything for knowing nothing. 

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            Last week there was a debate between Bill Nye "the science guy" and the founder of a "Creationist Museum" in Kentucky.  Many scientists, Christians and media members thought that the idea of this debate was silly and that the debate itself proved nothing.  I tend to think that the debate was actually pretty inconsequential as well, but for different reasons.  Most editorials that I read about the debate tended focus on how there are more than just two opinions on this "issue" but that only these two were included.  My problem with the debate was that you had one side arguing science and the other arguing religion.  One would be defended with data and logic based upon natural laws and the other would be defended using religious and philosophical theory.

            So many people were impressed that Bill Nye "the science guy" admitted that there were things he did not know about the beginnings of the universe.  I'm not sure why this impressed people so much, no real scientist claims to have solved every mystery of the universe.  However, that doesn't mean that science hasn't made substantial gains in what humans do know about the beginnings of the universe.  Just because science doesn't know "everything" it does not mean science does not illuminate a great many topics.  A vast majority of scientists agree on the age of the universe, the age of the Earth, when humans first emerged on Earth and much much more. 

            The sad part to me is when people are reluctant to say "I don't know."  They are so scared of the unknown that they replace the search for truth with some information that is often misplaced and misleading.  As a Christian I don't understand why so many Christians look at The Bible as a history or science book when it is so clearly neither.  Instead of simply admitting that The Bible is a collection of many different types of literature written by humans over thousands of years, but clearly not written as history or science.  In fact, these two academic disciplines would have been extremely unfamiliar or non-existent to these authors.  To have mentioned DNA, light years of radio-carbon dating in The Bible would have made no sense to the authors or their contempories since none of the above had been found by humans yet.  The Bible was written for moral and spiritual enrichment, not to enlighten humankind on how or when the world came about.  

            At the same time I am thoroughly perplexed by people who put all their faith in logic and reason.  There are many questions that science cannot answer for humanity.  They can’t speak to the spirit, consciousness and love.  These are aspects of the soul, whatever that is…  It is one of those things like the word perfect.  We can’t see it, but we have some idea of what it is.    

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            Just this morning CNN had a story on their website about a Pentecostal preacher named Jaime Coots from Kentucky who had his own reality show called “Snake Salvation.”   He had this show because he believed in a literal interpretation from the New Testament that a snakebite would not harm someone who was “anointed by God.”  He died today of…  (wait for it) a snakebite!  He would not allow doctors to help him because he knew that he would not die. 

           

            This situation seems to have 3 potential conclusions to me…

1.    God did not anoint this man.

2.    God does not really exist.

OR

3.    This man misinterpreted the point of the writing in exchange for a simple, but misguided understanding. 

            To me the third option is the most plausible.  This is a sad story for many reasons.  First and foremost a man died.  But secondly, he didn’t have to and this is the saddest part of the story.  If he would have had a better understanding of the text and that it is perfectly acceptable to use medicine or that God didn’t really expect him, as a pastor, to tame snakes, then he would be alive. 

            This story is an outrageous example of a prevalent problem in America today.  People will all too easily go to one extreme and completely sacrifice the other.  Either someone will disregard the most clear findings of science in exchange for a misinterpretation of an ancient sacred text or they will completely throw that text out in exchange for human a complete reliance on something extremely puzzling to science, human reason and logic. 

            Science and religion are two very different disciplines.  One is a process to reveal the laws of nature and the other offers answers the BIG questions that humankind has been wrestling with for hundreds of thousands of years.  They may not be the same, but they are not mutually exclusive.  We do not have to choose between them.  We can embrace science without destroying our faith.  Too many extremists do not believe that and that is when tragedy and irreconcilable conflict arises.  To continue moving forward we all need to be willing to say “I don’t know,” and collectively be willing to be open to the answers that we discover.