On Science, Religion, and Policy

When discussing interdisciplinary issues, I often will separate out portions of ideas into different "thought buckets" and assign different mental toolkits to each. I also will reject the application of certain toolkits to some issues because they don't fit, just as using a hammer to put in screws, or a screwdriver to put in nails simply won't produce the desired results.

What are these "mental toolkits"? They are what we see as academic disciplines and branches of thought - philosophy, economics, sociology, statistics, etc. Science and religion are two more valuable sets of ideas with which to evaluate issues. However, I have observed that human nature tends to drive us to cast our lots solely with one mode of thought or another, just as someone may become attached to one particular hammer.

The problem with this is that just as specialized schools of thought are useful because they were designed by human minds to accomplish tasks that human minds see, so too does this specialization blind us to "irrelevant" information so we can focus on the task at hand. Unfortunately, as we see in most current events today, problems are like the proverbial elephant felt by the group of blind men; each person feels a different part of the animal and deduces his own idea about what it is.

With this in mind, let's take a look at science and religion, because they come up very often when talking about policy and lead to conflicting conclusions.

Science, in a simple working definition, is meant to help us see what is there, from the infinitesimal atom to large-beyond-belief stellar bodies, from simple bacteria to complex environmental systems. This is called "naturalistic" thinking, and answers questions like "what?", "where?", and "how?"

Religion, in my conception, answers two questions for each person: "Where do I fit into the universe?" and "What ought I do?". A religion with a deity answers the first question by placing a person into a relationship with said deity, and it answers the second by introducing prohibitions ("Thou shalt not...") and prescriptions ("Thou shalt..."). This is "normative" thinking that informs us as to what we should do, why we should do it, and sometimes how.

To make a really geeky comparison, when talking about units of measurement, you have scalar and vector units. Scalar units just ARE: mass, size, count. Vector units have a quantity, but also a direction: velocity/speed, acceleration, force. Science is like a scalar unit - it just IS. Religion is like a vector unit - it IS, but it also points you to a SHOULD.

Why is this important? Because policy is based on value judgments. It also is based on facts and evidence of some sort, but in the end, someone somewhere makes a decision based on what SHOULD happen or what OUGHT to be done. Therefore, while I believe that science should contribute to policy, it is insufficient to fully inform it because science has no value or normative axis. This does not necessarily mean that religion ought to be used, but it explains why religion informs so many policy decisions for people. Also, by insisting on keeping the "taint" of subjectiveness out of policy decisions, those choices are not kept pure, but are invisibly influenced by some source of values that rushes to fill the "values vacuum." It is this invisible influence that is the most dangerous, because citizens don't know why decisions are being made the way they are.

How can this be addressed? In the bigger picture, we must recognize the place for values in policy decisions and openly discuss values from all sources, religious and secular. We must also constantly critique data we see - placing numbers on things like lives, health, happiness always will leave something out of the equation.

Does this mean that scientists should talk more values and religious advocates more science? Probably, but I'll save the admonitions for another time.