.png){kind=logo}
News Detail
On Science and Faith
Dr. Benjamin Bralove ’04 is uniquely qualified to write about science and faith. After graduating from St. Andrew’s, he matriculated to Cornell where he majored in Chemistry before attending Boston University School of Medicine. After completing his residency at Einstein College of Medicine, he became an attending physician with Mount Sinai Health System. After spending six years working in the emergency room, he made the decision to leave medicine and answer a call to become a Roman Catholic priest. He is currently a seminarian with the Archdiocese of Washington.
Because of his experiences, we asked Ben to author a piece for the magazine that speaks to how, in his experience and from his perspective, science and faith can be complementary.
In all of God’s creation, humans are the only creature who can be filled with awe. Regardless of place, time, or circumstance, it is a universal human experience. We cannot completely control when it happens. Each finds amazement in different circumstances: a sunset, a verse of poetry, the tiny hand of a newborn child, the roar of the engines of an airplane as it lifts off the runway.
In the context of medical school, my first experience of awe was when I was assisting for the first time in a cardiothoracic surgery. After I had just divided the sternum in half and retracted each piece to expose the underlying operating field, I found myself looking directly at the patient’s beating heart. Through the miracles of modern medicine, the patient could somehow be alive and asleep while we cut away skin and bone to operate on his heart. The supervising surgeon said, “Don’t forget to breathe!” and I took in a deep, gasping breath. For the last 10 or so seconds, I had forgotten to breathe. The absolute mystery of the human body had been physically opened in front of me, and it was completely arresting.
When we are presented with something that delights and amazes us, we cannot help wanting to get closer to it and know it more deeply. Our desire to know is not to get a good grade or to achieve some task, but rather to know something for its own sake. That may sound very abstract, but isn’t this the experience of falling in love? One person works to find out the other’s favorite restaurant, the other wants to know their favorite genre of movie. They do these things to impress the other but soon enough, they do it because they want to get to know each other without any additional motive. The couple desires to spend ever more time together to explore the mystery of the other, delighting in each new discovery. Each discovery produces a deeper knowledge which in turn leads to a deeper and more profound love. Despite spending a lifetime married and being able to finish each other’s sentences, a spouse is still capable of surprising the other. Human beings, as much as astrophysics, are inexhaustible mysteries.
For those like me who believe that everything was formed by God, the study of creation is not just an academic exercise but a religious one as well. This may sound surprising given the contentious relationship between science and religion today, but this has not always been the case. The astronomical model that hypothesized that the earth revolved around the sun was formulated by Polish priest Nicolaus Copernicus. The founder of modern genetics was Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel. The Big Bang theory was first proposed by Belgian priest Georges Lemaître. For these three men and countless other men and women throughout history, the pursuit of scientific knowledge was not contrary to their faith but rather a pious search for truth.
The field of medicine has been closely related to religion. For the Israelites and later for the early Christians, the source of all life and healing was God Himself. When there were extremely limited medical treatments, most medicine was performed by family members with priests serving the functions of intercessor, healer, and purifier. Even in the rare times when a physician was consulted in antiquity, the ultimate healing always came from God. Thus, the work of physicians can properly be described as sacred.
The sacrality of the physician’s work is still maintained to this day even among the areligious. Physicians often use the religious language of “vocation” and “calling” to describe their work. They begin their official “ministry” with the public recitation of a solemn oath, the Hippocratic Oath. Regardless of a physician’s specific views about God and the afterlife, being so close to the mystery of death brings about awe not just in the incredible gift of life but also the inevitability and finality of death. A University of Chicago national survey of physicians found that they were twice as likely (76%) than scientists in fields (39%) to believe in God.
If there is ultimately a harmony between science and faith, why does there seem to be so much difficulty today? The fundamental disagreement of our age is less about the content and more about the scope. When one discipline makes an inappropriate incursion into the other’s area of competence is when problems arise. When theologians try to do science or scientists try to do theology, the result is either bad science or bad theology.
Science shows us how we can best achieve a goal, but it may not tell us whether such a goal is worth pursuing. Conversely, faith can direct us to what actions we should pursue, while science provides us the tools to achieve them effectively. To excise faith from science runs the risk of removing the moral guidance that faith can help provide. Does the Theory of Relativity dictate whether or not nuclear fission should be used for creating energy or bombs? Is there a verse in the Bible that tells us the best agricultural method to feed the poor? When a scientist or physician suggests how a technology or medicine should or should not be used, they are introducing an ethical element that until recently was considered extraneous to their discipline. History can provide us with examples when the pursuit of science has gone too far and treated humans as disposable. The pursuit of scientific achievement without the imposition of ethical boundaries based in something other than subjective opinion is constantly at risk of devolving into a violent and exploitative enterprise. Those who are first to suffer are those who are weakest and without a voice.
I have been especially blessed to begin the first part of my life steeped in the world of science as a student, researcher, clinician, and teacher. The world of medicine gives us an incredible access to the incredible complexity of the human body, how it functions, and how it fails. The quantum leaps that have occurred in our field over the last two centuries have been an immeasurable aid to performing the divine mandate to give aid to the sick.
In my view, these cannot be anything but a gift from God who ordered all things rightly in His Providence. Each new discovery clarifies the mystery without exhausting it. Each new discovery lends greater testimony to ingenuity of the Creator. No truth can ever contradict the Truth.
In medicine all of this occurs in the context of a particular patient. The physician-patient relationship is deeply intimate and even sacred (i.e. set apart). A patient may disclose information to a physician that they do not share with their priest. During the physical examination, the physician may be touching the patient in ways that even their spouse does not! This sacred relationship occurs under the specter of the mystery of death. A mystery that no one can escape: everyone’s battle for good health and longer life ends in defeat.
After six years in the Emergency Room and providing physical healing for countless patients, I realized there were certain questions that science cannot answer and wounds that medicine cannot heal. “Why is there something, rather than nothing?” “What does it mean to be good?” “Can I be forgiven?” “Is death the end?” “Does the darkness win?”
While we can ignore these questions from time to time, we are forced to confront them again every time we are struck by awe and filled with amazement. I believe these questions are not rhetorical; there is an answer. I believe it lies in the One who not only created and ordered our world but became flesh in it. He took on our weakness to heal us of our weakness. It was not a mission to simply heal people of disease and extend their life. He crossed the mysterious threshold of death to free us from death and bring us everlasting life. While I loved my career in medicine, I felt called to move closer to the source of all life. Not as a negation of my past career, but towards its completion and fulfillment. We will continue to need and rely on the blessings God bestows on us in medicine, but for healing that brings us our deepest desire, eternal life, we must look elsewhere.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal School is a private, coeducational college preparatory day school for students in preschool (Age 2) through grade 12, located in Potomac, Maryland.