Sometimes my readers ask me whether I truly believe, for instance, that God created the world in seven days — when it’s proven, they say, that the evolution from amoebas to apes took 3.5 to 4 billion years.
My first response is to express some skepticism about the word “proven.” Even Charles Darwin — who, incidentally, did not consider himself an atheist — “proved” certain things 150 years ago, yet today modern biology challenges some of his claims. Science once held as fact that the Sun revolved around the Earth; today, we laugh at that — and tomorrow, our descendants will likely laugh at us.
Science works with hypotheses and theories that are always subject to verification and falsification. If a theory can’t be falsified, it’s not scientific. That’s a fundamental rule.
So, should religion adjust itself according to the evolving claims of science? I don’t think so. These are different realms entirely.
The “seven days” of the Bible have no connection to our physical 24-hour days. Science does not, and cannot, study eternal life. But does that mean eternal life doesn’t exist? From a biological standpoint, human life ends with death. But from a religious standpoint, it does not. Can we say one is right and the other wrong? No — these are incomparable frameworks.
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Science deals with distinct objects: plants, planets, chemical compounds. Humans too, from science’s perspective, are objects — studied by biology, psychology, sociology, and other disciplines.
But in religion — at least in Christianity — the human is a subject, and the central metaphor is that of the God-man.
It seems to me that science, religion, and art each describe reality in their own language, with their own tools, and each deserves our respect. They shouldn’t be pitted against one another — they should be seen as complementary.
The habit in our region of “refuting religion with science” is likely a Soviet legacy.
Gagarin flew into space — and didn’t see God.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
