At least I think it is a fun way to end the semester. Looking through 3-D glasses at an astronaut. Passing around a View Master. Looking at both sides of the coin at once. Trying to see the 3-D image in a Magic Eye illustration. But of course, I have a really good academic justification for the fun. Officially, we are studying the physiological depth clues.
Perhaps you aren’t familiar with that term. The physiological depth clues are those which give us a sense of depth utilizing the physical structures of our eyes. The most obvious is that we have two eyes located in different places in our heads. As a result, each of our eyes sees something slightly different from the other. Yet we normally don’t see double but rather a single, three-dimensional image. Our brains take the two slightly contradictory images from each eye and merge them into a three-dimensional picture. This happens without us even thinking about it.
Another fun (and trippy, according to my students) example is a 3-D illusion in my room. It is an artwork a former student made as their final project for the class. When you look at it from the front, you see a street corner with each street receding away into the distance. Then, as you shift your head towards the left or the right, the scene shifts. Just like you were looking at a real-life street corner. Except when you shift your head right, the scene shifts as if shifted to the left, and vice-versa. What is going on?
Looking at it from the top gives away how the illusion works. The whole thing is painted on a pair of pyramids that jut out at us. The points where the distant roads meet the horizon are painted on the top of the pyramids. This means that the “far away” part of the road is actually the closest to the viewer. Moving our head side to side changes how much of the different sides of the painted roads we see, just as it would in real life. It is a really clever illustration of how our eyes can be fooled. (Yes, that student got an “A” on their project.)
Except the illusion only works if you close one eye or stand far away. Standing less than about ten feet away with both eyes open shatters the illusion. Your brain puts together the images from each eye and reconstructs the true 3-D shape of the artwork. It is fun to look at it with just one eye and let the illusion trick us. But utilizing dual perspective from both eyes reveals the truth about what we are looking at.
Science vs. Faith
These days you can find many examples of both conservative Christians and nonreligious scientists expressing the belief science and faith are fundamentally in conflict. You can hear it thundered from a pulpit that biological evolution is a conspiracy cooked up by scientists to undermine faith. You can read pop science books that inform us that religious superstition is the greatest obstacle to the advancement of the human race. And they both agree that biblical and scientific accounts of the origins of life and the cosmos contradict each other fundamentally.
But are they really in conflict? Many of the pioneers of modern science would have found such a claim incomprehensible. Galileo believed himself to have been a faithful Catholic to the end of his life and encouraged both of his daughters to become nuns. Francis Bacon, in the preface to his pioneering work on the nature of science, prayed for divine guidance and identified God as the source of all truth. Isaac Newton wrote more pages of theology and church history than he did of physics. In recognition of his contributions to different fields, Blaise Pascal’s name is attached to both the metric unit of pressure and to a particular logical argument for belief in God.
The two books of revelation
Galileo and many others believed in two books of revelation. One was the Bible, referred to as ‘special revelation.’ This is God’s revelation of himself and the nature of the world and humanity conveyed through inspired human writers. The other was the book of natural revelation. This is that which we can learn about the world and the creator behind it through studying the physical and biological worlds. They believed there to be no fundamental contradiction between science and the Bible. Rather, the combination of the two provided a dual perspective that guides us to understand reality better.
But this wasn’t originally their idea. The Apostle Paul argues forcefully in the first chapter of the letter to the Romans that the study of the natural world reveals truth about the creator behind it. The first six verses of Psalm 19 proclaim, “the heavens declare the glory of God,” and expounds on that. It then pivots to extolling the goodness of God’s revealed instruction on how to live the good life. Then recognizing the truth through this dual perspective, the author declares the greatness of God, confesses his own errors and shortcomings, and prays for assistance in living a life that pleases God.
The psalmist’s response to his dual perspective on life and God contrasts to the typical tenor of science vs. religion ‘debates.’ There is frequently a lack of humility, an unwillingness to examine one’s self for errors, and a quickness to condemn. And if you carefully look behind the bravado, you will often find a self-serving agenda. Stirring up conflict and painting the other side as foolish, ignorant or even malicious is a great way to sell books, solicit donations, or advance a political agenda. A far cry from the psalmist’s self-reflective response.
Embracing a dual perspective
Years ago, I was talking with an assistant church minister. At one point he asked me, “If science and scripture contradict each other, which would I trust?” The very phrasing of the question revealed his unstated assumption that science and scripture are dealing with different realities.
What I should have done was to ask him back, “If what your right eye sees contradicts that of your left, which should you trust?” I think most of us would say it all depends. Is there something blocking or distorting the sight of one of my eyes? Am I overdue for getting my eyeglass prescription up to date? Is one of the eyes having problems or not functioning properly? There are many things that can distort our vision so that what we perceive is different from what is there. My answer would be that if science and scripture seem to be contradicting each other, then we need to look more carefully at both to determine what could be distorting our interpretation of one or both. The truth is that human beings are subject to a wide range of unconscious cognitive biases. The two books of revelation and the dual perspective it provides can help guard against such.
We have a hard time doing that, though. As the psalmist recognized, seeing accurately through a dual perspective frequently requires us to be humble and to admit our own errors. That goes against our nature, and our modern self-promoting, individualistic, information-deluged society makes that even harder. But more than ever we need to humbly look to the twin pillars of natural and special revelation to help us get a clearer picture of the world we live in and how to live rightly within it.
Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love, by Dava Sobel (Penguin Books, 2000).
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