By Mark Leonard and Rev. W. Matthew Broadbent

We’ve probably all heard the question, “Have you stopped beating your wife, yes or no?” What do you answer if you never did beat her? If you say “no,” it sounds as if you are still beating her, and if you say “yes,” it sounds as if you used to beat her. The truth is that there’s something wrong with the question.

Scientists trying to figure out how the world works have sometimes discovered that there was something wrong with their questions, too. I think in some of the current religious and social debates there’s also something wrong with the questions.

Let’s use a ton of gravel to show what scientists learned about 100 years ago. Imagine a ton of gravel with a sign, “free gravel; please take only half.” It starts as a ton, 2,000 pounds. The first visitor takes 1,000 pounds. The second takes 500, and so on. Gradually the pile shrinks until it’s a handful, then a few pebbles and then just one. It takes about 20 divisions to reduce a ton of gravel to a single pea-size pebble.

Now if you want to keep dividing, you need a different tool. Put away the shovel and start cracking with a hammer. Each time you crack the remaining fragment, it’s still the same kind of “stuff,” just a smaller piece. The ancient Greeks wondered if you could split forever or if eventually you would get to a limit. They suspected there was a limit, and even had a word for the smallest piece: atom. About 100 years ago scientists started making real progress investigating that limit, and concluded that there is a limit at about 73 splits.

We now know that the Greeks’ “smallest piece” can be subdivided further, but a shovel or a hammer isn’t the right tool. The Stanford Linear Accelerator is helping to break apart smaller and smaller bits, but the final answer is still a mystery.

There was similar mystery about light. Sir Isaac Newton wondered if light is waves or tiny chunks of “stuff.” He suspected it was chunks. It’s hard to imagine that it could be waves, because light travels just fine through empty space.

But then in the early 1800s the English physician Thomas Young did an experiment shining light through two pinholes. His experiment proved that light must be waves. That settled the matter until Albert Einstein got the Nobel Prize for discovering the photoelectric effect. He showed that light arrives one at a time like raindrops.

Sometimes it’s convenient for us to think of light as waves, and sometimes it’s useful to treat it as particles. The underlying truth is that light is whatever it is. There was something wrong with the question that assumed it had to be one or the other.

That brings us to other questions. Does God care about us? Does prayer make a difference? Did life arise by accident and random evolution, or by intelligent design?

My guess is that in many of these cases the real truth doesn’t quite fit our simple-minded questions. There’s nothing wrong with reality, there’s something wrong with our either-or questions.

-Mark Leonard

Asking the right questions is key to understanding. So, what are the questions? I think it is helpful to use the five basic questions of a good investigative reporter: who, what, when, where and why?

I think science asks the interior questions: What? When? Where? What is happening in our experience? When does it appear? Where does it manifest itself? Is it predictable? Science makes observations of the world, a multitude of observations. It collects data then distills the data in patterns. The patterns are then crafted into intelligible theories of how things work. In our materialistic world we often have the misconception that science defines “truth,” but science does not define truth, so much as it defines a way of knowing. We call this the scientific method, a simple but critical procedure that allows us to gather knowledge in a systematic way with minimal bias.

A theory in science is not “just a theory” as we might say in casual conversation - mere speculation. A theory is a framework by which we understand the way the world works. Theories last as long as they serve, or until an alternate theory better describes the observations and the data. Science does get into a problem when it defends a theory as ultimate truth. Theory, after all, is derived from the Greek theos - for God. A theory is a “God’s eye view” of the world.

Theology is also derived from theos and means the knowledge of God. Being concerned with the alpha and omega of things, theology asks the first and last questions: Who could have created this magnificent thing called life and why? What is the meaning behind it all? What is the divine pattern that shaped this existence? Why are we worthy to be conscious of our place within it? Religion posits a divine hand shaping us like “a potter shapes the clay.” Or as the psalmist said, “intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.” Who do we worship? Why have we been made in this divine image?

Notice that these questions are speculative questions. They are not measurable, quantifiable. These questions have to do with value and relationship. They are concerned with the narrative story of existence.

The religious mind is concerned with first and last things, alpha and omega, the purpose of the primal garden of earth and the vision of a new creation in which all weeping and crying will cease and death will be no more. This is the language of poetry, the imaginative metaphors of storytelling. It lends itself to the strange and the unpredictable. Science wants to know what is predictable and therefore understandable. Religion welcomes surprise and novelty that lead us to wonder and praise.

Religion needs science, good science, to ground its narrative in reality. Science needs to hear the faith narrative. We do not live in a value neutral world. Good religion believes the biblical narrative that says God saw everything that was made and it was very good. Science needs to hear that people value the earth and its inhabitants. Otherwise, science develops bombs lit by the fuse of political ideologies.

Science and faith need one another. Science observes and describes what has been created. Science explains the past. Faith attempts to envision the future, the possible, with all the complexities of creation, where beauty and suffering exist side by side. Religion, teetering on the edge of elegance, asks, “Who?” and “Why?” But science stands on the edge of mystery asking: “What?” “Where?” “When?”

Science and faith need to be in dialogue. Science describes what has been and faith imagines what could be and together they help us deal with what is.

-Rev. Matthew Broadbent

Rev. Broadbent is pastor of Foothills Congregational Church in Los Altos. Mark Leonard is a parishioner at the Church.