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....