Rocks of Ages by Stephen Jay Gould Read Free Book Online

If we succeed, we gain something truly “more precious than rubies,” and dignified by one of the most beautiful words in any language: wisdom.
    I have advanced two primary claims in designating my conception of the proper relationship between science and religion as NOMA, or non-overlapping magisteria: first, that these two domains hold equal worthand necessary status for any complete human life; and second, that they remain logically distinct and fully separate in styles of inquiry, however much and however tightly we must integrate the insights of both magisteria to build the rich and full view of life traditionally designated as wisdom. Thus, before presenting some examples (in this chapter’s more concrete second half) to anchor the generalities of this first section, I must defend these two key claims about NOMA in the face of an evident challenge inherent in the structure of my foregoing argument.
    1. E QUAL STATUS OF THE MAGISTERIA . I am a scientist by profession and a theological skeptic and nonparticipant by confession (as stated on this page , whatever my sincerely expressed fascination for religion as a subject). Am I truly practicing what I preach about equal and ineluctable status for both magisteria, when one consumes my life, but the other only piques my interest? In particular, how can I defend a professed respect for religion when I seem to denigrate the enterprise by two clear implications of the foregoing discussion? Why shouldn’t readers view me as just another arrogant scientist, hypocritically claiming noninterference based on deep respect and affection while actually attempting to demote religion to impotence and inconsequentiality?
    As a first implication for potential suspicion, I havestated that, while every person must formulate a moral theory under the magisterium of ethics and meaning, and while religion anchors this magisterium in most cultural traditions, the chosen pathway need not invoke religion at all, but may ground moral discourse in other disciplines, philosophy for example. If we all must develop a moral code, but may choose to do so without a formal appeal to religion, then how can this subject claim equal importance and dignity with science (which cannot be similarly ignored unless a person truly believes that each step might launch him into outer space rather than force a gravitational return of foot to ground)?
    Returning to a previous example, T. H. Huxley reported his distress upon hearing a standard line in the Anglican burial service suggesting that a belief in resurrection serves as a necessary prod for decent behavior during our earthly life:
    As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day, with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read, as a part of his duty, the words, “If the dead not rise again, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” I cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me … What! because I am face to face with irreparable loss, because I have given backto the source from whence it came, the cause of a great happiness, still retaining through all my life the blessings which have sprung and will spring from that cause, I am to renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovel in bestiality? Why, the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young, the poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek distraction in a gorge.
    But note that Huxley here attacks a specific claim within a particular tradition, not the concept of religion itself. When he says, later in the same letter, that “a deep sense of religion” is “compatible with the entire absence of theology,” he must have been thinking about this example. A magisterium, after all, is a site for dialogue and debate, not a set of eternal and invariable rules. So Huxley, in these statements, joins a debate within the magisterium of religion about the moral value of good deeds. He surely stands outside the magisterium of science—and