Читать книгу Much Ado About Everything - Peter Milward - Страница 5

“From life’s dawn it is drawn down.” Thus it was, says Hopkins, even from the time of Cain and Abel. Once there are two of a kind, especially among human beings, one faces the fact of fraternal strife. As we also say, “So many minds, so many opinions.” Birds of a feather may flock together, but that is rarely true of human beings. In the human race, for all our scientific specification as homo sapiens, we seem to be driven not so much by a centripetal as by a centrifugal force, into what Jesus foresees as “wars and rumors of war”.

Among us, as Paul says, it is necessary for heresies to exist. What he means is that they can’t be helped. The more one tries to put them down, the more they flourish, like bad smells. Or rather, like daisies on a lawn, the more they are trodden under foot, the more densely they flower, making a white path on the green.

Thus in the early Church we have Athanasius against the Arians, Augustine against the Pelagians, Cyril against the Nestorians. Later, in Shakespeare’s time we have the Protestants against the Papists, the Calvinists against the Arminians, the Jesuits against the Dominicans and the Jansenists. And then there is the one Jesuit theologian Bellarmine against the one scientist Galileo.

Concerning such men and their opinions, TS Eliot makes the magisterial comment, “These men and those who opposed them and those whom they opposed accept the constitution of silence and are folded in a single party.” But what does he know? As the French say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” The names may change with the men, but their opinions have a tendency to remain.

Of the above-mentioned names, it is surely that of Galileo which is still remembered in our day. And it is assumed that, if he is still remembered, he must be right and his opponent must be wrong. Yet it is wittily pointed out by Bellarmine’s biographer that of the two adversaries Bellarmine was the better scientist, and Galileo the better theologian. How so? Well, the former warned the latter that in science “truth” is invariably relative, not absolute, and the latter retorted that in the interpretation of Holy Scripture the sense of the human author has to be taken into account.

Anyhow, the controversy between them still remains in another form. It even recurs in the headlines of modern newspapers and magazines. It sounds like a rehash of the old controversy of science v. religion, going back to the age of Darwin and Huxley. Today’s Darwinists are represented by the vocal followers of the similar-sounding name of Dawkins, while the religionists, mostly American fundamentalists, are called Creationists. The former profess their faith in the Big Bang, and the latter in the creative Word of God, “Let there be light!” On both sides it is a question of faith.

Now, in face of this continuing dispute, what, I may be asked, is my position, or my considered opinion? Well, like Newman when faced with Darwin’s Origin of Species, I feel disposed to agree with both parties to the dispute.

On the one hand, the divine Word uttered in the beginning of the Book of Genesis, “Let there be light!” is my favorite word in the Bible. I like to see everything in the created universe, from the stars above to the flowers below, as echoes of this creative word. What I don’t like are the dark holes, to which modern scientists are devoting increasing attention, or the wars, which human beings are increasingly waging with each other with the assistance of modern scientists.

On the other hand, I also like to think of the created universe as beginning, if I may misuse the words of TS Eliot, with a Big Bang, not a little whimper. What the fundamentalists see in the Bible as an original light, the scientists hear as a result of their academic calculations as a Big Bang. But, apart from the difference in the senses of sight and sound, I find no opposition between the light and the bang. On the one hand, there is a Biblical imagination, and on the other, a scientific imagination.

All the same, there still remains the problem posed by the fundamentalists, or the creationists (as their opponents like to call them), to the scientists. What was there before the Big Bang? If there was nothing, how did something come out of nothing? After all, doesn’t Aristotle say, with his customary appeal to human reason, “Nothing will come of nothing”? And then, doesn’t Aristotle, as the forerunner of our scientists, not to mention Galileo, take the side of Lear? And don’t the creationists take the side of Cordelia? And doesn’t that mean they are also on the side of Shakespeare?

Thus for me it looks as if this modern controversy of science v. religion, or Dawkins v. creationism, boils down to that between Lear with his two false daughters and his one true daughter Cordelia, with whom he is reunited at the end. Then, in so far as I have to make a choice, I prefer to side with Cordelia, and behind her with Shakespeare, and behind him with the religious view of the universe, and behind that view with the divine utterance, “Let there be light!”

After all, the Big Bang espoused by our modern scientists is, it can’t be denied, a big noise. And in our modern world we have too much noise, or rather too many noises of varying descriptions, with all of them adding up to a cacophony which is all too like a chaos of conflicting opinions. On the other hand, there is something “so cool, so calm, so bright” in the simple command of God, “Let there be light!” It sounds so eminently reasonable in contrast to the “rational” calculations of our scientists. Though uttered in the beginning, it sounds like a divine conclusion.