Reason and Wonder: Why Science and Faith Need Each Other - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 159947526X ISBN 13: 9781599475264

Publisher: Templeton Foundation Pr, 2017

Synopsis

Often science and religion are seen as completely separate enti­ties. Science exists in the realm of fact, whereas religion exists in the realm of faith. Conversations about genes, psychology, or even the meaning of life occur in silos. But as Eric Priest, Keith Ward, David Myers, N. T. Wright, and others show, these conversations are so much richer when both science and faith are incorporated.

This is exactly what Reason and Wonder does. Eric Priest has brought together twelve of the leading thinkers in science and theology to discuss everything from the origins of the universe to evolution and evil. At the heart of each essay is an understanding that the best science—and the best theology— are both undergirded by an appeal to reason as well as a deep sense of wonder.

Each of these great scientific and theological thinkers offers a chapter on their area of expertise, and the book closes with a stimulating set of questions for group discussion or personal reflection.

• Contributors and their topics include:
• Eric Priest: Towards an integration of science and religion
• Keith Ward: God, science and the New Atheism
• Eleonore Stump: Natural law, reductionism and the Creator
• David Wilkinson: The origin and end of the universe: A challenge for Christianity
• Jennifer Wiseman: Universe of wonder, universe of life
• Kenneth R. Miller: Evolution, faith and science
• Michael J. Murray and Jeff Schloss: Evolution and evil
• Pauline Rudd: Is there more to life than genes?
• David G. Myers: Psychological science meets Christian faith
• John Wyatt: Being a person: Towards an integration of neuroscientific and Christian perspectives
• John Swinton: From projection to connection: Conversa­tions between science, spirituality and health
• Mark Harris: Do the miracles of Jesus contradict science?
• N. T. Wright: Can a scientist trust the New Testament? 

About this title

About the Author

Eric Priest was appointed as a lecturer (1968) and profes­sor (1983) at St Andrews University, where he founded an internationally renowned research group on solar theory. His honors include being elected a member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters (1994) and a fellow of the Royal Society (2002). In 2002 he was awarded the Hale Prize of the American Astronomical Society and in 2009 the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. In 2015 St Andrews Univer­sity awarded him an honorary DSc. He has edited fifteen books and written three research monographs and 460 journal papers.
 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Reason and Wonder

Why science and faith need each other

By Eric Priest

Templeton Press

Copyright © 2016 Eric Priest
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-59947-526-4

Contents

List of illustrations, 
List of contributors, 
Preface, 
Acknowledgements, 
1 Introduction: Towards an integration of science and religion? Eric Priest, 
2 God, science and the New Atheism Keith Ward, 
3 Natural law, reductionism and the Creator Eleonore Stump, 
4 The origin and end of the universe: A challenge for Christianity David Wilkinson, 
5 Universe of wonder, universe of life Jennifer Wiseman, 
6 Evolution, faith and science Kenneth R. Miller, 
7 Evolution and evil Michael J. Murray and Jeff Schloss, 
8 Is there more to life than genes? Pauline Rudd, 
9 Psychological science meets Christian faith David G. Myers, 
10 Being a person: Towards an integration of neuroscientific and Christian perspectives John Wyatt, 
11 From projection to connection: Conversations between science, spirituality and health John Swinton, 
12 Do the miracles of Jesus contradict science? Mark Harris, 
13 Can a scientist trust the New Testament? N. T. Wright, 
14 Questions for private thought or group discussion, 
References and further reading, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Towards an integration of science and religion?

ERIC PRIEST

The aim of this book is to bring together a series of world experts, who show in their own disciplines how many different aspects of both science and faith involve reason and wonder, which support one another and lead towards a much more integrated attitude to the sciences and humanities than is usually realized.

I am an applied mathematician (or theoretical physicist) and also a Christian, and in both I have been on a journey of discovery, or a pilgrimage, where my ideas have continually evolved. Not being an expert in theology or philosophy, this first chapter just represents some personal thoughts. In particular, I would like to challenge two views: the first is that the sciences are coldly inhuman and purely logical, whereas the humanities involve only our emotions and imagination; the second is that science is monolithic and reductionistic, governed by a simple set of instructions called the `scientific method'. It is important also to counter the overspecialization that inhibits the natural human yearning to integrate and make sense of diverse knowledge.

This book takes some steps towards an integration of science and faith by moving away from a paradigm in which they are regarded as separate and having nothing to say to each other. As an introductory chapter, we build the case for developing an integrated approach by commenting on the possible relationships between science and religion, including the claim by New Atheism that they are at war (p. 2). There follows a discussion of the rise and fall of atheism (pp. 5–9) and a brief account of the way the words `science' and `religion' have evolved in meaning over the centuries (pp. 9–14). Then a personal insight into what it is like to be a scientist in practice (pp. 14–17) leads to a development of the argument for integrating the sciences and humanities, including religion (pp. 17–24), and for why science and faith need each other (pp. 25–30). Finally, a summary of the wide-ranging themes of this book is presented, from philosophy, through astronomy to evolution, biology, psychology and theology (pp. 30–9).

The relationship between science and religion

Ian Barbour (1997) suggested four possible relationships between science and religion, namely that they are:

1 in conflict

2 independent

3 in dialogue

4 integrated.

Conflict

The first possibility, that science and faith are at war or in conflict, is the one that has been stoked by the New Atheists. However, I have never personally felt a conflict between science and religion and suggest that such a conflict arises only if you misunderstand the nature of either science or religion. Thus, at one extreme you may have an ultra-fundamentalist view of religion with a wooden literalist interpretation of Scripture, which says you can `learn your science from the Bible'. But this ignores the history of Christian ideas, in which St Augustine in AD 400 famously wrote: `You should not interpret Scripture in a way that conflicts with reason and experience'. At the other extreme, scientism suggests that `science produces the only reliable knowledge', but that is clearly false, since the questions that are most important to us as human beings are usually outside science, such as `Am I in love?' `Is that work of art beautiful?' `What is my purpose in life?'

A clear philosophical argument against scientism has been presented by Trigg (2015), who shows why science needs metaphysics. According to him, science does not have all the answers. It cannot explain why mathematics, a product of human minds, can unlock the secrets of the physical universe, nor why it can deal with abstract reasoning beyond the physical world. Indeed, scientists at the frontiers of physics happily contemplate universes beyond human reach. Thus, the foundations of science lie beyond science, and reasoning beyond the observable is needed to discover what is not yet known, so that metaphysics helps us conceive of realities apparently beyond our grasp.

Independent or in dialogue

In ancient Greece, the Stoics thought that God is everywhere, whereas the Epicureans believed that, if the gods existed, they took no interest in the world, but occasionally interfered. The latter led on to Stephen Jay Gould's (1989) idea of non-overlapping magisteria (see Fig. 1.1), which is similar to Barbour's relationship (2), in which there is no connection between science (the material world) and matters of religion (including ethics and morals) and so there is no possibility of conflict. However, this line of thinking naturally leads to a deist god, who is remote and uncaring and who is completely different from the Christian God. The next step, as science increases and you see no relevance for religion, is naturally to do away with religion altogether.

But the Christian God is very different from a remote deist god. The Christian God created the universe and all its laws with the potential to create life, and humans with a longing to study and understand the nature of God's handiwork. This God, however, is also intimately involved with the world, continually sustaining and supporting it. Thus, he or she is the continuous source of all our creative acts, whether they be in the sciences or the arts or our daily interactions with other people that are central to what it means to be human. Also, what Jesus shows is that God is alongside us in our suffering. This does not explain suffering, but it does mean that we are not alone, and is why I personally am much more attracted to Christianity than other religions.

The third view, which I used to favour, is that science and religion intersect along a fuzzy boundary, where different questions are asked about the same reality and where they are in a respectful and listening dialogue rather than a state of war (see Fig. 1.2). The idea here is to recognize that some questions are scientific (often the how questions) and some are non-scientific (often the why questions) and that answers to both can be valuable (see pp. 14–15).

Integrated

A final model for the relationship between science and religion, and which we are moving towards in this book, is that they are integrated. There are several aspects to such a view, which are developed in this chapter. First of all, the history of science shows that the division into science and religion came about only in the late nineteenth century (see pp. 9–14). Second, science is not monolithic with a single approach but consists of a range of different fields that continuously merge into one another (see Fig. 1.3). Third, the idea that all scientists adopt the so-called `scientific method' is a myth, since there are many approaches being employed in the different sciences (see pp. 20–2).

Aspects of such an integrated model are developed on pages 17–24 and 25–30. It has common features: with McLeish (2014), who proposes a `theology of science' and a `science of theology'; with Trigg (2015), who argues persuasively that science does not have all the answers but needs metaphysics; and with Bancewicz (2015), who shows how science enhances faith.

The rise and fall of atheism

Modern atheism is a complex mixture with several strands (e.g. Plantinga et al., 2010). As science has developed and explained more natural phenomena, so a role for a God of the gaps has declined. So-called scientific atheism has grown, in which God is not needed for scientific explanation. In contrast, humanistic atheism was stimulated by the Enlightenment with its primacy of human reason and independence. Such atheism was articulated by Feuerbach (1804–72), with his view that our ideas of God are projections of our own minds, and reached a climax with Nietzsche's (1844–1900) proclamation of the death of God.

Modernism has, moreover, spawned at least two more types of atheism. One is apathetic atheism, with an indifference to the great questions of life, and a second is protest atheism, which is a cry against a God who seems indifferent to human suffering (e.g. Dostoevsky (1821–81) and Camus (1913–60)).

Atheisms are often critical reactions to classical theism, which emphasizes one God as supreme being and distant creator. Such reactions are, however, not so effective against the Trinitarian theism of Christianity, where God is a unity who is ultimately personal and continually interacting with his universe.

Alister McGrath (2004) describes the rise and fall of atheism. He stresses that atheism seemed for the last 200 years to be on the verge of eliminating religion as an outmoded superstition, but recently there has been a decline of disbelief and a rise of religious devotion throughout the world. He examines what went wrong with the atheist dream and suggests that religion is likely to play a central role in the twenty-first century.

He traces the history of atheism from its emergence in eighteenth-century Europe as a worldview that offered liberation from the rigidity of traditional religion to its golden age in the first half of the twentieth century. He exposes the flaws at the heart of atheism and argues that a renewal of faith is natural and inevitable.

The eighteenth century brought new ideas such as those of David Hume (1711–76) in the Enlightenment. A highly creative period of atheist reflection and critique of Christian ideas led to some seeing the Church as an enemy of progress. Modernity came into being by 1750 with its theme that reason is all that humanity needs to master the world and with atheism as its established religion.

In Catholic France, the French Revolution of 1789 aimed to over-throw tyranny and establish a rule of justice and equality, which signalled the dawn of a golden age for atheism. A temporary atheistic republic was set up with the only gods being the ideals of reason, liberty and fraternity. Voltaire was a deist, who felt that Christianity had corrupted a pure rational concept of God that could be known to everyone through reason or nature. Descartes (1596–1650) unwittingly laid the ground for atheism by regarding true knowledge as being demonstrable and abandoning an appeal to experience. He set out to demonstrate the existence of God by philosophical argument, proposing that God is the best explanation for the universe, but this led to D'Holbach suggesting that the universe can explain itself with no need for God.

The French Revolution encouraged the creation of a mindset of modern atheism by Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72), Karl Marx (1818–83) and Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) as the presumption of the existence of God was replaced by intellectual scepticism. They argued in turn that religion is a human construction, that it dulls the pain of an unjust world, and that it is an example of obsessional neurosis, namely, the veneration of a father figure.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth century the perception grew of a conflict between science and religion (see pp. 9–14) in which religious belief would be eliminated as a relic of a superstitious age. However, the idea of an endemic conflict is no longer taken seriously by any major historian of science, and it is clear that there is no necessary connection between atheism and science, since some scientists are religious and some are not.

Gradually, a demand to prove beliefs grew, but it became clear to many that neither atheism nor Christian belief can be proved, and so Thomas Huxley coined the term `agnostic' in 1869.

The event which converted much of the Western world to atheism was the publication of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. One of the main reasons was that, within British Protestantism, a conception of God had grown up that proved later to be demonstrably in conflict with Darwin, namely, a way of defending God's existence. This defence had been proposed by William Paley (1802) and was widely accepted, including by the young Darwin. Paley suggested that many aspects of the world, such as the intricacy of the human eye and the human body, offered evidence of intelligent design; that is, of being planned in their present form by God, a benevolent watchmaker. Darwin's observations on board the Beagle of diverse populations of creatures and plants in different environments, as well as the fossil record suggesting that some species had died out, cast doubt on Paley's theory.

What is now clear is that Darwinism has no bearing on the existence of God. Some Darwinians (such as Asa Gray) are theists; some are not. Darwin himself changed from Christian to agnostic. The belief that scientists are necessarily atheists is a myth, as is the belief that, as a scientific worldview is increasingly accepted, the number of believing scientists will dwindle. A survey of the religious views of scientists in 1916 showed that 40 per cent have some form of personal religious belief, but, when the poll was repeated in 1996, the percentages were the same, with 40 per cent having active religious belief, 40 per cent having none and 20 per cent being agnostic.

The `death of God', the loss of a sense of the presence of God in the face of so much injustice, culminated in the 1960s. Nietzsche suggested that God had ceased to be a presence in Western culture, so that there are no absolute values, and that belief had become a matter of taste rather than reason. The 1960s represented a crisis for Western Christianity, with the recognition that it had to renew itself or die; John Robinson's Honest to God (1963) dispensed with a God `out there', while Bonhoeffer's letters from prison talked of religionless Christianity.

By 1970, many felt that religion was on the way out, secularism was triumphant and a more peaceful world was inevitable. But none of this proved true. Since then, atheism has lost its appeal. In Eastern Europe there has been a collapse of atheism and a resurgence of religious belief. In Western culture too, according to McGrath, we are in a post-atheist realm with atheism losing its cutting edge for several reasons:

1 Philosophical argument about God has declined with the realization that both Christianity and atheism are beyond rational proof. The idea that atheism is the only option for a thinking person is no longer widely held.

2 Whereas atheists used to argue that evil such as occurred at Auschwitz disproves the existence of God, many Christians would now reply that it demonstrates instead the depths to which humanity can sink and that God is a suffering God who is alongside sufferers.

3 Atheism produced a world without God that has been sucked dry of the imagination and creativity which are central to human nature and which urge us to press beyond the tangible to the spiritual; such longing and yearning for the transcendent is a natural part of being created by God.

4 The expectation of atheism was that faith in God would die out, but instead by 1980 a renewed interest in spirituality was evident.

5 A remarkable growth of Pentecostalism and a renewal of the mainstream denominations by the Charismatic movement produced a new sense of the presence of God.

6 Modernism had been replaced by postmodernism, characterized by a rejection of both absolute truth and intolerant atheism, and a tolerance for a variety of cultures and beliefs.

Whereas atheism at first appeared as a liberator from old ideas with a positive view of reality, it is now in a twilight zone, tarnished by memories of periods when it ruled as an intolerant oppressor.

Christianity is now being renewed and is growing across the world. In 1900 only 1 per cent of Koreans were Christian but now 49 per cent profess Christianity, having been attracted by its role as a liberator. In the West there is a growing awareness of the importance of spirituality in healthcare (see Chapter 11), and the role of religion in creating and sustaining a sense of community is recognized. Whereas the rise of atheism in the West was a protest against a corrupt and complacent Church, it has instead energized Christianity, encouraging it to reform itself.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Templeton Foundation Pr
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 159947526X
• ISBN 13: 9781599475264
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 211
• Editor: Priest Eric