Complex Christianity

The desire to reconcile science and religion has been a goal since at least the Renaissance. Machiavelli's modernism broke with Europe's religious past by explicitly distinction between positive and normative -- doing what works as opposed to what the Church says one should do.  Swedenborg sought to reconcile explicitly reconcile science and religion. Today others undertake the project to reconcile science and religion from a literary perspective, while others, such as Sam Harris, adopt a scientistic -- that is, an exaggerated and inappropriately applied -- perspective to attack faith and religion.

The problem, as Sam Harris should understand, is that science as it is practiced is generally inapplicable to the social sciences, philosophy, and the humanities. Science is based on the experimental method, which Richard Feynman pithily defined as first guessing a new law, second performing an experiment, and third, comparing the guess to the experiment's results. If the guess doesn't square with experiment, then it's wrong, and that is the key to science.

What's great for particle physics though may not be appropriate for public policy due to the complexity of the latter. That is, with longer time-frames and more moving parts than a physics experiment, public policy in the real world is a different animal altogether. Christianity understands and accounts for this when Jesus noted that a tree is known by its fruits in both the Gospel according to Luke 6:43-45 and Matthew 7:15-20. These two passages recognize that there are short- and long-term consequences that can work in opposition to each other, and it is the long-term consequences by which policies and actions should be judged. This are confounded and made unclear by the inherent complexity of social systems.

There are multiple examples that could be developed the demonstrate the importance and unpredictability of long-term consequences:

• Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow
• Tom Wolfe's Great Relearning
• California and its Democrat excesses
• Venezuela

In each case there are a clear set of benefits that are promised, and yet the New Class scientific policy planners, socialists, and decision makers don't deliver what they promised. And yet, Sam Harris does not examine these failures, which are legion. Christianity, in contrast, is the tree for the fruits for countries in which people want to live. Understanding Christianity in terms of complex social systems seems to be entirely possible given the technical state of the art, but it is certainly not of interest to and will not be rewarded by Silicon Valley, the elite academy, or DC. Nevertheless, it seems to be a worthwhile goal to pursue.