Religion
has an uneasy relationship with science
A new project bringing together
science and religion is unlikely to end the long and sometimes bitter debate
over the relationship between the two.
However, it will offer trainee
priests and Christians who are scientists the chance to engage with
contemporary science.
The project - backed by the
Church of England - is to receive more than £700,000 to promote greater
engagement between science and Christians, as part of a three-year Durham
University programme.
Trainee priests and others will be
offered access to resources on contemporary science, and the scheme will
research attitudes towards science among Church leaders.
Funded by the Templeton World Charity
Foundation, the project will invite proposals for grants of up to £10,000 for
"scientists in congregations" to promote greater understanding of the
relationship between science and faith.
Too
often Christian leaders have felt that science is a threat The Rev Prof David
Wilkinson, University of Durham
While
some contemporary scientists who are atheists - such as Richard
Dawkins in his book The God Delusion - have termed faith
not credible, and even delusional, others within science do not see the two as
being mutually exclusive.
Prof Wilkinson |
One of those leading the programme is
the Rev Prof David Wilkinson, an astrophysicist in the department of theology
and religion at Durham University.
"Too often Christian leaders
have felt that science is a threat or have felt a lack of confidence in
engaging with it," he says.
Battle
of ideas
Prof Wilkinson became a Methodist
minister after training and working in theoretical astrophysics on the origin
of the universe.
"Many of the questions that
faith and science posed to each other were fruitful," he says.
"For many different folk both
inside and outside the church, science and religion don't have a simplistic
relationship - and the model that says science has to be pitted against
religion doesn't explain the history of a very interesting interaction.
"Today, many cosmologists are
finding that some questions go beyond science - for example, where does the
sense of awe in the universe come from?"
The
idea of a battle between the two dates back to the medieval Church's condemnation of Galileo
for his discovery that the Earth moves around the Sun rather than vice versa.
It took hundreds of years for the
Church to admit that Galileo had a point.
But the real narrative of a conflict
between science and religion was developed in the late 19th Century, and has
proved remarkably persistent - not least because it makes for lively debates on
TV, radio and the internet.
Many have said that science deals with
facts, while religion deals with faith, though many others today say the two
have overlapping interests - arguing that both share a desire to find out what
is behind the Universe.
However, more recently, arguments
over creationism and intelligent design have sometimes pitted one against the
other.
'Simplistic'
distinctions
"The old distinction that
science is about facts and religious belief is about faith is far too
simplistic," says Prof Wilkinson.
"Science involves evidence, but
it also involves skills of judgement, and skills of assessing evidence.
"After all, you only have a
limited amount of evidence to base your theory, and you have to trust your
evidence - which isn't far from being Christian.
"It doesn't involve blind faith
- and indeed religion is not good religion if it is simply based on blind
faith.
"Christianity has to be open to
interpretation about its claims about the world and experience."
For Prof Wilkinson, the two are
absolutely not mutually exclusive.
Living
scientists with religious beliefs
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the
world wide web, Unitarian Universalism
Sir Colin John Humphreys, physicist,
president of Christians in Science
Ahmed Zewail, 1999 Nobel Prize for chemistry,
Muslim
Simon Conway Morris, palaeontologist,
Christian
Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow,
astrophysicist and former chairman of the Royal Society, churchgoer who doesn't
believe in God
He cites The Goldilocks Enigma by
Paul Davies and his idea that, like the porridge in the tale of Goldilocks and
the three bears, the universe seems to be "just right' for life" in
many intriguing ways.
"I've had moments of 'Wow,' like
that - where you are struck by the beauty and elegance not just of the Universe
but the beautiful, simple laws of physics that underlie the Universe,"
Prof Wilkinson says.
That sense of wonder is echoed by
Catholic priest and particle physicist Father Andrew Pinsent, who worked at the
Cern laboratory.
Renewed
conflict
Now research director at the Ian
Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, he believes
it is "an extremely promising" time for research on science and
religion.
However, he fears that the old
"conflict metaphor" has been revived, and is shaping the way many
think - especially if they have little actual knowledge of either science or
religion.
Prof
Richard Dawkins is scathing about religion
Fr Pinsent welcomes the idea of
training priests to have scientific knowledge, saying knowledge is an intrinsic
good.
"Many priests already have
considerable scientific training," he says.
"For example, when I trained as
a Catholic priest in Rome, 10% of the seminarians in my college had higher
degrees in science and medicine, whereas the average of the UK population is
estimated to be under 1.5%.
"Moreover, two of the most
important theories of modern science, genetics and the big bang, were both
invented by priests."
He says that as a particle physicist,
he was always impressed by the discovery of "beautiful patterns and
symmetries in nature, mathematics at a deep level, and the extraordinary
properties of light".
"These discoveries cannot, in
themselves, be used to construct a formal proof of the existence of God, but
they do evoke a sense of wonder to which a religious response is natural,"
he says.
Other scientists agree that the
long-standing idea of a war between science and religion is a misconception -
though they would not necessarily see the two as natural partners.
Increased
understanding
James D Williams, lecturer in science
education at the University of Sussex, says: "Where we have issues, they
generally revolve around people trying to reconcile science and religion or
using religion to refute science.
James D Williams |
"This misunderstands the nature
of science.
"Science deals in the natural,
religion the 'supernatural'.
"Science seeks explanations for
natural phenomena, whereas religion seeks to understand meaning in life."
"In my view, science and
religion cannot be integrated, that is, science cannot answer many of the
questions religion poses and, likewise, religion cannot answer scientific
questions."
Science and religion both deal in the natural and the supernatural, for God is everywhere and in everything; there is nowhere he is not and nothing that is not of his nature.( Sorry if this sounds vaguely Thomistic. I'm not a great fan of Thomas
ReplyDeleteAquinas, but he wasn't always off the mark existentially.)
Not all scientists would agree with my proposition (Dawkins, for one). As I said in a previous post, Prof. Dawkins will probably spend Eternity trying to convince God that he doesn't exist.