This week we have explored Religion and Science (or rather, disease) and their seemingly opposing sides. One contradicts the Bible, while the other fights against those contradictions. Evolution has been denied by devout believers of the Catholic faith, all while scientists bang their heads against the wall in frustration.
We read Einstein’s Religion and Science and discussed how “a conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible” (Einstein) that goes against what the scientific community has established. We shared how religion has had an impact on our lives and how we have reconciled it with our own scientific beliefs, and we commended the Pope for supporting science as a friend to religion. Many of us found the following statement interesting: “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind” (Einstein). What meaning do you take from this phrase? What has been your experience with religion and science as a pair, and how does that experience relate to the our discussion about Einstein’s work? Your experience could come from an outside perspective looking in on the apparent war between the two, or from the perspective of a person who has been caught in the crossfire.
We also were asked to read The Decameron for homework, in which the Black Death’s destruction and fatality brings together a group of men and women that share stories among themselves. Boccaccio writes that “huge numbers of men and women abandoned their rightful city, their rightful homes, their relatives and their parents and their things, and sought out the countryside, as if the wrath of God would punish the iniquities of men with this plague based on where they happened to be, as if the wrath of God was aroused against only those who unfortunately found themselves within the city walls” (Bocaccio 10). How does this belief that the plague was a Divine punishment reflect the science advancements of that time? How much influence do you think religion had on the writing of The Decameron, or more specifically, its depiction of the Black Death? Does this tying of religion with disease correspond with Einstein’s analysis of the relationship between the two?
I grew up first as a Catholic, then as a Buddhist, and then after discovering the writings of Dawkins and Hitchens in middle school, I became an atheist. Throughout my experience with religion, I never truly believed in an afterlife, or that my ancestors were looking down on me as I prayed to them in the Buddhist temples I visited, and since the beginning of my schooling, I've held great stock in the scientific method, and the discovery of objective truth.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, I've come to realize that science is limited in what it can explain, by the reaches of our technology and the brain capacity we've been born with as humans. To me, in the advent of modern science and technology, religion and science have become somewhat separate, as science has taken over the phenomena religion has attempted to explain through conjecture. Through this process, religion and science have grown to complement each other, and although I might not go so far to say that science, and curiosity in natural phenomena cannot exist without the presence of religion, for the most part, my views are in alignment with Einstein's perception of religion and science, and their relationship.
In The Decameron, the belief that the plague was divine punishment simply reflects the relative lack of understanding of the human body, and the stunted development of medicine during that era. Again, this is indicative of a time before science fully explained the processes religion explained through essentially blind, unquestioning belief in ancient text. In this sense, religion played a critical role in how the Black Death was viewed, not just in The Decameron, but also by the affected populace at the time.
The Decameron involved stories of morals and virtues. Perhaps they had nothing or everything to do with religion, but morals and virtues are things that are taught through religion as well as life. That being said, I do not think that religion had a huge influence over the Decameron. Boccaccio told stories that were similar to fables with clear problems and solutions. For example, in the Sixth Day, Tenth Story, the friar Cipolla would tell elaborate "scam" stories. Two individuals attempted to reveal him as a fraud. They fail. Cipolla becomes even more loved and wealthy. This story pokes fun at religion as a way to scam people out of their money and can be seen as an attack on the Church. I did not really see a connection between the Black Death and religion in these stories. Maybe they were describing traits that a good person of the time should have in order to avoid the plague.
ReplyDeleteI have never really tied religion and science together. I am not particularly religious, so I usually dismiss anything that ties science to religion. I think that this is because, for me at least, science is based off pure evidence and observable realities, while religion is based off a belief of something that isn't necessarily "real". In short I believe that science can be complete without religion and vice versa.
ReplyDeleteThe Decameron appeared to have more to do with religion than science because in that time period science was frowned upon for the most part, and people only wanted to believe the word of the Roman Catholic Church, which kind of set the law of the land, if you will. People fled from their belongings because they saw what happened to people who stuck around. People feared that the plague was a wrath of God because there was no science or medicine to explain or stop it. As Andrew said the plague was unstopped for merely a lack of understanding of the human body, so I believe that we did not know enough about science or medicine to treat it and that is why religion came into play in the Decameron.
Religion has been a very strong force for centuries. I agree that people turn to religion as a way of coping with things they understand. There is something safe in believing that some divine entity is in control and is taking care of your when everything seems chaotic and helpless. I want to challenge that religion came into play in the Decameron as an answer to the mystery of the plague. At the beginning of the Decameron it's stated that the plague either "came through the operation of the heavenly bodies or was visited upon the human race by God's righteous anger as a punishment for our sins," (7). However, the people's reaction to the disease was different - some fled, some indulged, some took to the countryside, and some refrained from partaking in vivacious events. It is not stated though, that people turned to God or religion as an answer to their struggles. Instead they abandoned their own families and friends, looking out for themselves above everyone else. In fact, it seems that people almost withdrew from religion, not respecting divine authority and not following the tradition practices of the funerals. The other instances of religion, like in the stories, don't seem to be based on the disease that was spreading through Italy.
ReplyDeleteI think religion and science are very reliant on each other to provide truth and reason into our lives, at least my life for sure. Religion gives me a community, a belief, and a way of life that I can hold myself to. Of course, science is almost as important in providing truth, understanding, and discovery into my life. I think for me especially there has to be a balance between both to maintain my spiritual self and my intellectual self. In the Decameron it was interesting to see the setting and reaction, spiritually, to the coming disease. I think the very fact that the meeting and beginning of the story occurs in a church is important. The women had come to the church to look for peace and help from God in a time of need, something that the science of that time could not have provided them.
ReplyDeleteI have not personally experienced a struggle with religion and science because I do not consider myself a religious person, but I think that they do share certain essential goals that make them compatible, particularly the desire to serve others beyond one’s own personal benefit or self-preservation.
ReplyDeleteThe belief that the plague was a divine punishment reflects the lack of scientific understanding at the time. Because people at the time had no other way of explaining the mass death and suffering that the plague caused, they could only use religion as a way to gain some sort of understanding and a way to cope with the fact that the disease was above of their control. They may have been unable to stop the plague, but having some type of explanation could have allowed them to feel less helpless. However, in Boccaccio’s The Decameron, no matter how people coped with the spread of the disease—whether by fleeing, abandoning each other, indulging their desires, or punishing themselves—the plague killed them just the same. In the story of Friar Cipolla, Boccaccio creates a character who has repeatedly committed every sin, yet he still manages to become memorialized as a Saint. Therefore, I felt that Boccaccio commented on how religious belief and practice, whether present or absent, did not actually matter to the disease itself.
As we discussed copiously, I find that religion was not necessarily a basis on which the Decameron was built. It was merely a ubiquitous presence in society at that time and so it was difficult to find a text that didn't include some religious undertones to it because it was what was familiar to most at the time. However, as I understand it, religion was shaken at its foundation with the growing presence and danger of the plague as it went against a lot of what many of the population believed in.
ReplyDeleteI think during that time period Religion had a huge effect on how people saw and dealt with the plague, however, I think that the Decameron makes fun of that through its different stories. The stories show how religion is not the savior from this plague, as we saw how religion was manipulated to get a sinner buried in the church, to get laid by a young pretty girl, and to abuse a wife. I think the Decameron acknowledges how religion is present in how people treated the plague, but I also think it is a satire on that mindset.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to religion and science I believe that Einstein is right on how each fuels the other. That the divine feeling also is felt in scientists discovering major breakthroughs.