Science & religion
Plutarch’s attitude to scientific theory seems liberal, but this is a false impression. Scientific explanation, for Plutarch, is not free and independent of his theological beliefs. The question he asks is not ‘Is this theory a true account of the facts?’ but ‘Is it true and also compatible with the supremacy of god and good in the universe?’ p. 92
Aemilius is perhaps typical of the attitudes Plutarch admires. When the moon was eclipsed before the battle of Pydna, Aemilius made generous sacrifices to the moon and Heracles (Aem. 17.10). He is clearly not regarded as superstitious; he knows about the theory of eclipses but offers sacrifices as the customary gesture of piety. p.93
And Plutarch says this in Pericles 6:
“He seems also to have learned from his [Anaxagoras’] teaching to rise above that superstitious terror which springs from an ignorant wonder at the common phenomena of the heavens. It affects those who know nothing of the causes of such things, who fear the gods to the point of madness and are easily confused through their lack of experience. A knowledge of natural cuases, on the other hand, banishes these fears and replaces morbid superstition with a piety which rests on a sure foundation supported by rational hopes....
In my opinion, however, there was nothing to prevent both the scientist and the prophet from being right, since the one correctly diagnosed the cause and the other the meaning of the prodigy [an animal with a skull deformity]...Those who say that to discover the cause of a phenomenon disposes of its meaning fail to notice that the same reasoning which explains away divine portents would also dispense with the artificial symbols created by mankind.”
Comment
And don't we hear this today?
Those who say that the 'story' (meaning its not true) of creation in Genesis can sit along side evolutionary dogma and both can be true and tells us important things, if they are Christians, are in fact lapsing into a pagan cosmological dichotomy: they are saying the world is not 'one' but 'two'; raising questions about their view of the work of God in creation and as to what is really real. Is 'evolution' really real, which tells us that our ontological frame is really material and material interactions, divorced from the life of God, or is it the world as structured in Genesis 1 that is really real, and our ontological frame is the personal...ultimately, love?
