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| The deeper the discourse, the more interesting it is. Graphic Source |
The keys to resolving the science and religion debate are these areas of concern:
Epistemology: how do we know what (we think) we know?
Metaphysics: what is the fundamental nature of reality?
Hermeneutics: how do we read texts, particularly authoritative religious ones?
Anthropology: what does it mean to be human?
Ethics: what is good and how do we progress as a society?
Politics: who gets to decide?
How we delve into such questions will produce simply a lot of noise or, on the positive side, light by which to make our way through important issues.
The writers of a new report on research on "science and religion" say the debate in recent years has been like a swinmming pool, where all the noise is at the shallow end, with the emphasis on rhetorical point-scoring and little respect, whereas going deeply into these vital matters allows more honesty and makes the discourse more interesting.
The report is ‘Science and Religion’: Moving away from the shallow end, produced from public polling and interviews of "experts" in the field by Theos, self-described as "the UK’s leading religion and society think tank. It has a broad Christian basis and exists to enrich the conversation about the role of faith in society through research, events, and media commentary".
Referring to the key elements of the debate given above, the report states:
This report draws out six different ‘dimensions’ within the science and religion debate and argues that for each we should abandon the shallow end and go deeper. Specifically, we need to go beyond:
💢 faith vs fact, when it comes to what we know
💢 natural vs supernatural, when it comes to what we think about reality
💢 literal vs metaphorical, when it comes to how we read holy books
💢 material vs spiritual, when it comes to how we understand what it means to be human
💢 moral polarisation, when it comes to how we think about our ideas and practices
💢 ‘playing god’, when it comes to who decides about the progress of science and technology
The report writers say that optimum outcomes in such analysis of human experience and our living reality would not be agreement and harmony—unlikely to ever occur—but to have participants accept that they should "open up the rest of the pool and [...] go deeper".
Focusing on narrow issues disrupts our attempts to approach a field of science or religion from a wide perspective. The report gives this example:
*[The 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species (24 November 1859) and the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth (12 February 1809)]The topic that has most often dominated the science and religion debate is, of course, evolution, the sometimes bizarre and often bad-tempered confrontation between Darwinists and those who reject the theory.
The best known and most influential figure in the science and religion debate over the last 40 years has been Richard Dawkins, the British evolutionary biologist and best-selling author, who has not only made a powerful case for a gene-centred understanding of evolution, but has repeatedly framed evolution and religion as competitors for the same truth. Religion, by his reckoning, is “a scientific theory”, “a competing explanation for facts about the universe and life”, and, more specifically, a straightforward alternative to evolution: “God and natural selection are... the only two workable theories we have of why we exist.”
By no means all evolutionary biologists adopted his line on the issue. The late American paleobiologist Steven Jay Gould not only disagreed with Dawkins’ interpretation of evolution but also with his views on science and religion. Nevertheless, the very fact that this became a debate between two evolutionary biologists further helped root the whole issue in this field. As a result, media coverage of science and religion has been heavily weighted to discussions around evolution, aided by the Darwin celebrations in 2009*, and even research on science and religion has been heavily skewed in that direction.
The report continues:
It hasn’t all been evolution. Another famous scientific figure, Stephen Hawking, was associated with science and religion ever since he ended his best-selling 1988 book A Brief History of Time with a line about knowing the mind of God. Hawking was an atheist, albeit a less combative one than Dawkins. He was clear that his famous concluding phrase was entirely figurative, and pitted his discipline against religion, in a way that drew a riposte from fellow cosmologist and longstanding friend, Lord Martin Rees^.
^ On Hawking's death Rees wrote:
Stephen was far from being the archetype unworldy or nerdish scientist. [...] He had robust common sense, and was ready to express forceful political opinions. However, a downside of his iconic status was that that his comments attracted exaggerated attention even on topics where he had no special expertise – for instance philosophy, or the dangers from aliens or from intelligent machines.
Rees' riposte referred to was:
"I know Stephen Hawking well enough to know that he has read very little philosophy and even less theology, so I don't think we should attach any weight to his views on this topic." (The Independent 2010)
He went on to comment:
"I would support peaceful co-existence between religion and science because they concern different domains. Anyone who takes theology seriously knows that it's not a matter of using it to explain things that scientists are mystified by."
His interviewer states:
Lord Rees is not a militant atheist who goes out of his way to insult people of belief – Richard Dawkins once called him "a compliant quisling" for his tolerance of religion.
To return to the Theos report, it continues, "The third usual suspect is neuroscience":
This part of the debate usually lacks the fireworks of the others, and often adopts a somewhat humbler tone if only because most people recognise that we are a long way from understanding how the brain works. Nevertheless, since the link between epileptic seizures and religious experiences was first probed by neuroscientists, the idea of a ‘God spot’ or that the spiritual was ‘all in the mind’ has fascinated a wider audience, and gained much media attention.
It's no wonder that Hawking, putting on his philosopher's hat, would explore how his theories – yes, Hawking is known as a theoretical physicist – were linked to the range of topics that cosmology encompasses:
Cosmology naturally gravitates to metaphysics, invariably drawing on ideas of creation, contingency, necessity, lawfulness, and eternity in its rhetoric. Even if it’s only for marketing purposes, God is popularly invoked in the title of books on the Big Bang or high energy physics. Moreover, the prominence of the creation story – technically two creation stories – at the start of the book of Genesis, lends the idea of creation a religious significance. If only because they come together around the moment of creation, it feels obvious to find evidence for the science and religion debate within this particular scientific discipline.
Looming on the horizon are issues related to the impact on people's lives of AI (artificial intelligence) and transhumanism in all its forms:
In the light of this, the relevance of neuroscience and its connection with neurotheology is obvious.
However:
When you burrow into the data around public (let alone expert) opinion on evolution, cosmology, and neuroscience, you begin to realise that none of these topics is as significant or as contentious in the landscape of science and religion as you might think.
For example:
When asked the extent to which they agreed with the statement, “the more we know about the universe through astronomy and cosmology, the harder it is to be religious,” 23% of people agreed and 13% agreed strongly. By comparison, 23% of people disagreed with the same statement and 13% disagreed strongly. Public opinion was perfectly divided.
Moreover, "there was a slight balance in favour of the belief that the Big Bang theory made it hard to be religious, but it was relatively small". Also:
Half (50%) of the non-religious respondents, for example, agreed/strongly that “the more we know about the universe through astronomy and cosmology, the harder it is to be religious”, compared to 19% of Christians and 18% of Muslims. That correlation is only to be expected. Either way, what is clear is that antagonism around cosmology issues and religion is considerably lower than around generic ‘science and religion’.
For other issues on the "science-religion" front:
No scientific discipline was judged on balance to make it hard to be religious, in the way that the Big Bang was. For example, for neuroscience, 28% of people agreed/ strongly that the discipline made it hard to be religious, whereas 39% of people disagreed/ strongly. For medical science it was 32% vs 40%; for psychology, 25% vs 40%; chemistry 28% vs 37%; climate science 24% vs 44%, and for geology, 28% vs 35%.
One more set of data further underlines how the perception of science and religion is distorted. That relates to people's attitude to science. These figures come from an earlier study in this Theos series titled, The Perils of Misperception (2019).
When asked whether they agreed that “the dangers of science outweigh its benefits”, 9% of the total population agreed/strongly, whereas 65% of people disagreed/strongly. Among the religious this balance was 12% vs 61% (non-religious 6% vs 77%) whereas among regular (> once a month) worshippers it was 16% vs 59%.
Hostility (or perhaps anxiety) on the part of religious believers over science is "driven by textual literalists". Note that mainstream Christians do not believe the Bible is word for word from God. To look at that more closely:
Of those who thought that the Bible was “the inspired word of God but not everything should be taken literally, word for word”, 12% agreed or strongly agreed that “the dangers of science outweigh its benefits”, whilst 61% of people disagreed or strongly disagreed – i.e.broadly similar to the national levels. By comparison, of those who thought that the Bible was “the actual word of God and to be taken literally, word for word”, 22% agreed or strongly agreed that “the dangers of science outweigh its benefits”, whilst 31% of people disagreed or strongly disagreed. There was a similar pattern of evidence according to people’s attitude to the Qur’an.
Looking at the attitudes of the 101‘elite’ interviewees "who were recruited (a) because of their expertise in science, philosophy, sociology, or religious studies, or for communicating these to a wider audience, and (b) because of their general distance from or aversion to religion" where 63% were non-religious and 55% said that they “did not believe in God”:
💢 12% said they thought science and religion were strongly incompatible;
💢 24% said they thought the two were incompatible;
💢 41% said they thought they were compatible; and
💢 23% said they thought they were strongly compatible.
And so to the conclusion that can be drawn from these findings:
In summary, if we adopt the narrow-angle lens on the relationship between science and religion – the evolution-Big Bang-neuroscience lens – and then present it as a series of binary choices – evolution or creation? Big Bang or God? neurochemicals or spiritual experience? – and, thereafter, a single model – harmony or conflict? – we naturally steer the conversation to a restricted area where there is likely to be a lot of shouting and noise; in effect, the shallow end of the pool. Alternatively, if we opt for the wider-angle lens take on the relationship, we will begin to see a rather more complex picture, with pockets of antipathy, anxiety, and incompatibility, but also with areas of ambiguity, complexity and harmony.
These insights into the science-religion debate are valuable because they show that the attitudes of the players in this field are key to how fruitful the attempt to achieve a meeting of minds will be. Rhetorical warfare will achieve little, whereas the truthful assessment of what is known and what is conjecture, as with Stephen Hawking, can enter into the deeper realms of human experience and knowledge.
Ω See the first part of my delving into this report: Science and religion: a meeting of minds.
Ω If you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified when a new post is published.
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