Thought for the day - BBC radio solent #3

Here is the 5:25am version - I quite liked Tiggy Walkers slip of the tongue at the end!

Day 3: Science and Faith

The American philosopher, Thomas Nagel, wrote a famous paper entitled “what is it like to be a bat?” Bats are intriguing creatures because many species use echo-location in the same way as we use sight. Instead of detecting light bouncing off objects, these bats emit high-pitch clicks and then listen for the echos in order to form an idea of their surroundings. Interestingly they use the same part of their brain for echo-location as we do for sight. They literally “see” with sound.

Nagels question was whether we could understand what it would be like to see with sound. His answer was no. Even if the brain activity involved with echo location and visual sight is identical, we have only experienced, and thus can only “know” what it is like to see using light. It may be possible to define or “objectify” all the elements of sensing our surroundings, however at the end of the day a description of how the system works is not going to replace the experience of either seeing, or indeed echo location. There is thus an important distinction between the description of an event, and the experience of that same event.

Science is certainly an important tool that many of us owe our lives to, however we must be careful not to mistake the success of science in one area as an indication that science provides answers in all areas. Science is the description of life, but spirituality, often expressed in religious terms, is the experience of life. In many ways spirituality is our relationship with the world around us. How interesting then that Christianity is based not upon scientific knowledge, but upon a relationship with God. Such a relationship can never be contradicted by science, because as Nagel has shown with his bat analogy, science can never explain “what it’s like” to truly know God.