Dialectics: Nature and Religion

During this week’s reading of Jane Eyre, Mr. Brocklehurst criticized Ms. Temple for allowing curls in the girls’ hair. He responded to Ms. Temple saying, “Naturally! Yes, but we are not to conform to nature: I wish these girls to be the Children of Grace: and why that abundance?”

Just as Mr. Brocklehurst does, society similar puts religion and nature in mutually exclusive categories. Religion is divine and nature is earthly. It would be a disgrace for such divinity to lower itself down to man’s level. Furthermore, nature’s actions would conflict with that of religion. This can be seen through the theories of creation. The Big Bang Theory, the theory of Evolution, and the Bible’s account of God creating the world all clash with each other.

Does it have to be this way? What makes religion divine is the way that it acts through nature. The New Testament’s account of Jesus’ miracles was exemplified because it denied nature. Nature gives us a solid foundation of knowledge. Religion sometimes stretches and goes beyond this solid foundation. In this way, nature strengthens the role of religion.

Furthermore, these theories of creation don’t necessarily disprove each other. Evolution doesn’t disprove the Christian belief that God created the world and life in it. It only describes how life came to be where it is now, not why. Evolution doesn’t remark on why common descent chose the paths that it did. God could have been the driving force behind evolution. Similarly, the Big Bang leaves scientists uncomfortable because they don’t have a complete explanation for it. It seems to come out of nowhere, and the Bible teaches creation “out of nothing” (with no pre-existing material). This is what the Big Bang looks to be. The universe did not come to be on its own. Scientists say that possibly an extremely, unimaginably high energy source could have caused the Big Bang and created “something out of nothing”. This can go hand in hand with the Christian belief in that God could have been that energy source and thus was the cause of creation.

Nature and religion don’t have to be separate concepts. They can be an explanation for each other, one can be the root cause of the other, one can fuel the other, and they both can balance each other. Maybe, religion and nature can coexist just as ying and yang do. Maybe, it’s not a coincidence that ying-yang is a symbol for the religion of Taoism. Taoism emphasizes living in accord with nature. Religion and nature in peaceful coexistence.