Science, Religion, and the Human Experience

the complementarity of science and religion 159

If the radiance of a thousand suns

were to burst into the sky,

that would be like

the splendor of the Mighty One.

Yet, when the sinister and gigantic cloud rose up in the far distance over
Point Zero, he was reminded of another line from the same source:

I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.

Finally, I cannot stress strongly enough the unity that is the basis of the
complementarity thesis. It was perhaps best expressed in 1911 by Nishida in
An Inquiry into the Good:^50

[N]ature and spirit are not two completely different kinds of reality.

The distinction between them results from different ways of looking

at one and the same reality. Anyone who deeply comprehends na-

ture discerns a spiritual unity at its base. Moreover, complete, true

spirit is united with nature; only one reality exists in the universe.

Perhaps we could say that this insight is the ultimate justification for the

use of the term “cosmology” by both scientists and metaphysicians alike. What

I have said in this essay is offered in the spirit of this insight.

notes
1.Science and the Modern World, Lowell Lectures 1925 (New York: The Free
Press, [1925] 1967), 181.

2. Harold H. Oliver, “The Complementarity of Theology and Cosmology,”Zygon
   13 (1978): 19–33. Reprinted in Oliver,Relatedness: Essays in Metaphysics and Theology
   (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1984), 1–20.


3. Hugo Adam Bedau, “Complementarity and the Relation between Science and
   Religion,”Zygon9 (1974): 202–224.
   4.Who’s Who in Theology and Science,compiled and edited by the John Temple-
   ton Foundation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 7.


4. Ibid.
   6.Progress in Theology: The Newsletter of the John Templeton Foundation8 (March–
   April, 2000): 1.


5. Ibid.


6. Oliver,Relatedness,12.
   9.Progress in Theology,9.


7. D. M. MacKay, “ ‘Complementarity’ in Scientific and Religious Thinking,”
   Zygon9 (1974), 229.


8. Stephen Jay Gould,Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
   (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), 261.


9. Ibid., 260.