Books Discussed in this Essay:
Religion Explained: the evolutionary origins of religious thought, by Pascal Boyer. (Basic Books, 2002)
The Language of God: a scientist presents evidence for belief, by Francis Collins. (The Free Press, 2006)
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel C. Dennett. (Viking Press, 2006)
Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris. (Knopf, 2006)
Evolving God: a provocative view of the origins of religion, by Barbara King. (Doubleday, 2007)
Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion, by L. A. Kirkpatrick. Guilford Publications, 2005.
Evolution and Christian Faith: reflections of an evolutionary biologist, by Joan Roughgarden. (Island Press, 2006)
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: a personal view of the search for god, by Carl Sagan. (The Penguin Press, 2006)
Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society by David Sloan Wilson. (University of Chicago Press, 2002)
The Creation: an appeal to save life on earth, by Edward. O. Wilson. (W. W. Norton, 2006)
Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: the evolutionary origins of belief, by Lewis Wolpert. (W. W. Norton, 2007)
All books supporting religion are alike. All books attacking it do so in their own way (well, maybe not, but doesn't this start us off on a nice Tolstoyan note?). In any event, religion's interface with science - long fraught - seems especially so these days, with a bevy of books criticizing religion as well as defending it.
Why so much attention, just now? Exhibit A: creationist efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution, masquerading as "intelligent design." Next, the takeover of the US executive branch by right-wing ayatollahs, combined with presidential assertions that his policies are undertaken in furtherance of god's will, not to mention efforts to break down the Jeffersonian "wall of separation" between church and state. Add to this the so-called war on terror, which is largely a struggle with radical Islam in response to the latter's faith-based initiative against the United States.
Meanwhile, American stem-cell research continues to be hobbled by the insistence that every fertilized cell has been "ensouled" and is therefore human and holy. And don't forget the conspicuous rise of the right-wing evangelical movement in the United States – bastion of religiosity in the developed world - featuring such gems as Pat Robertson's assertion that catastrophes, from natural hurricanes to unnatural terrorism, are brought about by god's displeasure with the sexually or textually sinful.
In short, it is fair to say that "they" (religious zealots) started it, as they usually do. It was the Catholic Church that burned Bruno and persecuted Galileo, not the other way around. When have atheists claimed that religious devotees will burn in hell, or sought to hurry them along not with words but flaming faggots? Polls consistently show Americans more likely to vote for a presidential candidate who is an anencephalic ax murderer (but religious) than the most admirable atheist. In any event, it appears that despite – or, perhaps, because of – being an oppressed minority, some atheists are finally madder than hell (and/or mad at hell) and unwilling to "take it" any more.
In his 2003 book, The End of Faith, Sam Harris pointed out that alone of all human assertions, those qualifying as "religious," almost by definition, automatically demand and typically receive immense respect, even veneration. Claim that the Earth is flat, or that the Tooth Fairy exists, and you will be deservedly laughed at. But maintain that according to your religion, a 6th century desert tribal leader ascended to heaven on a winged horse, and you are immediately entitled to deference. (By the way, is the similar claim that a predecessor ascended to heaven, roughly 600 years earlier, without aid of a winged horse less ridiculous … or more?) It has long been, let us say, an article of faith that at least in polite company, religious faith – belief without evidence – should go unchallenged. Much of the recent uproar comes from just such challenging, among which biologists have been prominent.
Like Mark Twain's celebrated comment about stopping smoking, scholars have found it easy to explain religion: they've done it hundreds of times, in psychological, psychoanalytic, sociological, historical, anthropological and economic terms. Biologists, by contrast, have been Johnnies-come-lately, a neglect that has been changing of late, as growing numbers seek to explore the evolutionary factors – the likely "adaptive significance" – of religion. Indeed, given that religion is, in one form or another, a cross-cultural universal, that it has had such powerful effects on human beings (for good and ill), and yet its biological underpinnings remain so elusive, religion is an especially ripe topic for biologists' scrutiny.
It would seem both a fertile field and a frustrating one. Thus, on the one hand, religious belief of one sort of another seems to qualify as a cross-cultural universal, therefore suggesting that it might well have emerged, somehow, from the cross-cultural universality of human nature, the common evolutionary background shared by all Homo sapiens. But on the other, it often appears that religious practice is fitness-reducing rather than enhancing; if so, then genetically mediated tendencies toward religion should have been selected against. Think of the frequent religious advocacy of sexual restraint (not uncommonly, outright celibacy), of tithing, self-abnegating moral duty and other seeming diminutions of personal fitness, along with the characteristic denial of the "evidence of our senses" in favor of faith in things asserted but not clearly demonstrated. What might be the fitness-enhancing benefits of religion that compensate for these costs? The question itself is novel: social scientists, for example, have long considered religion as a thing sui generis, not as a behavioral predisposition that arose because in some way it contributed to the survival and reproduction of its participants.
For Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), as well as Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell), religion is primarily the misbegotten offspring of memes that promote themselves in human minds: essentially, religion as mental virus, and thus, something adaptive for "itself" and not for its "victims." Or it could be a nonadaptive byproduct of something adaptive in its own right. For example, children seem hard-wired to accept parental teaching, since such input is likely to be fitness-enhancing ("This is good to eat," "Don't pet the saber-tooth," and so forth). This, in turn, makes children vulnerable to whatever else they are taught ("Respect the Sabbath," "Cover your hair") as well as – if we are to believe Freud, in The Future of an Illusion – downright needy when it comes to parent-like beings, leading especially to the patriarchal sky-god of the Abrahamic faiths.
Anthropologist Weston La Barre developed a similar argument, in Shadow of Childhood, going on to propose that prayer is unique to our species, resulting from our prolonged, neotonous, developmental trajectory: "No other animal when in distress or danger magically commands or prayerfully begs the environment to change its nature for the organism's specific benefit. Calling upon the 'supernatural' to change the natural is an exclusively human reaction. … [O]ne doubts that even herding animals like the many antelope species in Africa have gods they call upon when they fall behind the fleeing herd and are about to be killed by lions, wild dogs, cheetahs or hyenas. Antelope infancy and parenthood do not present such formative extravagancies. And in the circumstances the belief itself would be highly maladaptive."
For Dawkins in particular, religious belief is not only maladaptive – and unjustified – but, given the susceptibility of young children to adult indoctrination, the very teaching of religion to defenseless children is a form of child abuse! Other hypotheses of religion as maladaptive include anthropologist Pascal Boyer's grandly titled Religion Explained, which essentially argues that natural selection would have favored a mechanism for detecting "agency" in nature, enabling its possessor to predict who is about to do what (often, to whom). Since false positives would be much less fitness-reducing than false negatives (i.e., better to attribute malign intent to a tornado – and thus take cover – than to assume it is benign and suffer as a result) selection would promote hypersensitivity, or "overdetection," essentially a hair-trigger system whereby motive is attributed not only to other people, and mastodons, but also trees, hurricanes, or the sun. Add, next, the benefit of "decoupling" such predictions from the actual presence of the being in question ("What might my rival be planning right now?") and the stage is set for attributing causation to "agents" whose agency might well be entirely imagined.
Boyer's work, in turn, converges on that of Stewart Guthrie, whose 1995 book, Faces in the Clouds, made a powerful case for the potency of anthropomorphism, the human tendency to see human (or human-like) images in natural phenomena. This human inclination has morphed into a more specific, named phenomenon: pareidolia, the perception of patterns where none exists (some recent, "real" examples: Jesus's face in a tortilla, the Virgin Mary's outline in a semi-melted hunk of chocolate, Mother Teresa's profile in a cinnamon bun.)
Not all biologically based hypotheses for the evolution of religion are negative, however. In Darwin's Cathedral, David Sloan Wilson explores the possibility that religious belief is advantageous for its practitioners because it contributes to solidarity – including but not limited to moral codes – that benefits the group and wouldn't otherwise be within reach. This notion, appealing as it might be, is actually a logical and mathematical stretch for most biologists, relying as it does upon "group selection." The problem is that even if groups displaying a particular trait do better than groups lacking it, selection acting within such groups should favor individuals who "cheat." Mathematical models have shown that group selection can work, in theory, but only if the differential survival of religious groups more than compensates for any disadvantage suffered by individuals within each group. It is at least possible that human beings meet this requirement, especially when it comes to religion, since within-group self-policing could maintain religiosity; it certainly did during the Inquisition.
Biologist Lewis Wolpert seeks to examine the penchant for faith in a book whose title derives from an interchange between Alice and the Red Queen, in which the latter points out that "sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Wolpert describes and interprets various widespread logical fallacies, examining their diverse origins in brain pathology, neurochemical impacts, and other cognitive limitations, seeking to understand why so many people, in the words of H. L. Mencken, "believe passionately in the palpably not true." His book is a useful compendium of hallucinations, confabulations and other self-delusions, with the intriguing added thesis that much science is itself counter-intuitive (the Earth going round the sun rather than vice versa, the fact that even a demonstrably solid object is mostly empty space, the mutability of species, quantum "weirdness," etc.)
Wolpert maintains that "true causal reasoning" is unknown among other animals and often highly flawed in our own species. Yet, as anthropologist Clifford Geertz pointed out, people simply cannot look at the world "in dumb astonishment or blind apathy," so they struggle for explanations – objectively valid or not - resulting inevitably in beliefs. Wolpert then suggests that "those with such beliefs most likely did better." But the bulk of Six Impossible Things … details inaccurate beliefs: How might the holders of false beliefs "do better"? (In short, what is the adaptive significance?) One possibility is that faith in miracles, in golden plates upon which divine wisdom has been inscribed, or in the reality of bright blue elephant-headed gods are not false after all. Another is that such faith has beneficial by-products, like placebo. For now, it isn't clear how attachment to one or many gods actually paid off, since, although a deity may have turned water into wine and helped bring down the walls of Jericho in the distant past, such parent-like beneficence hasn't been reliably documented in recent millennia.
Primatologist and anthropologist Barbara King enters the fray with Evolving God, a knowledgeable, readable, and entertaining excursion into the prehistory of religion, with a refreshing orientation toward nonhuman primates as well as early hominids; Evolving God also has the added merit of pushing beyond the Abrahamic "big three," including a handy account of religious archeology. King's touchstone is "belongingness," that "[h]ominids turned to the sacred realm because they evolved to relate in deeply emotional ways with their social partners, because the resulting mutuality engendered its own creativity and generated increasingly nuanced expressions of belongingness over time, and because the human brain evolved to allow an extension of this belongingness beyond the here and now."
King is convincing about the merits and allure of belongingness, but less so – indeed, she is distressingly silent - when it comes to the adaptive significance of cozying up to the ineffable. If, as she suggests, "at bedrock is the belief that one may be seen, heard, protected, harmed, loved, frightened, or soothed by interaction with God, gods, or spirits," then what in the real world of biology and reproductive fitness has anchored human biology to this bedrock? A feeling of belongingness sounds nice, as does one of cheerfulness, or the contentment that comes from having a full belly … but to be adaptive, one ought to have a genuinely full belly. By the same token, there is little doubt that many people derive consolation from religion, but it would little avail our ancestors, confronted by a saber-tooth, to be consoled by a faith-based certainty that it is really a pussy cat, or that to be mauled by said feline guarantees a rapid ascent to heaven – especially if it makes such ascent more likely! No matter how exalted, feelings divorced from reality can be dangerous delusions.
King is quick to dismiss a "genetic approach" to understanding the evolution of religiosity, heaping what may be appropriate scorn on Dean Hamer's simplistic, over-hyped claim for The God Gene. But the author of Evolving God doesn't seem to realize that any evolutionary approach is necessarily, at its heart, a genetic one. We must conclude, sadly, that a convincing evolutionary explanation for the origin of religion has yet to be formulated. Such an account, were it to arise, would doubtless be unconvincing to believers in any event, because whatever it postulated, it would not conclude that religious belief arose because (1) it simply represents an accurate perception of god, like identification of a predator or of a prospective mate, or (2) it was installed in the human mind and/or genome by god, presumably for his glory and our counter-evidentiary enlightenment.
David Hume began his essay, The Natural History of Religion (1757) as follows: "As every enquiry which regards religion is of the utmost importance, there are two questions in particular which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning its origin in human nature." So far, we've been concerned with religion's "origin in human nature." Next, it's "foundation in reason."
The four horsemen of the current antireligious apocalypse are Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Sagan. All are (or in the case of Carl Sagan, who died in 1996, were) passionate advocates of reason, committed to the proposition that religion is essentially unreasonable.
Sagan delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow in 1985, and we can all be grateful that they are finally available in print; only slightly updated by Ann Druyan, Sagan's wisdom is fresh and relevant today, offering the humane, courageous, and rational vision that became the astronomer's trademark. We owe much to Carl Sagan, not least his Sisyphean efforts at banishing scientific illiteracy and his tireless exhortations in favor of basic planetary hygiene, all abundantly on display in The Varieties of Scientific Experience. Readers will want to join me, as well, in offering a posthumous thank you to Sagan for acquainting us with Rupert Brooke's hilarious poem, "Heaven." (It's too long to quote here, but, as Casey Stengel used to say, you can look it up – on the Web.)
William James delivered an earlier set of Gifford Lectures, turning them into his renowned The Varieties of Religious Experience, in which he defined religion as a "feeling of being at home in the Universe." Carl Sagan certainly had that sense and labored, with great success, to share it. His Varieties leave no doubt that for Sagan, this feeling leaves little or no room for religion, a point he makes with extraordinary grace and often, laugh-out-loud humor.
Carl Sagan is associated with the assertion that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," a dictum applicable not only to various assertions of the paranormal, but to religion as well … assuming that one has the chutzpah to subject such claims to critical scrutiny. Bertrand Russell, for example, once asked how we might respond to someone's heartfelt assertion that a perfect China teapot, too small to be detected, was in elliptical orbit between the Earth and Mars. Whose responsibility, for example, would it be to "prove" it? And if the teapot's non-existence could not be verifiably ruled out, does this mean that claims in its favor must be granted equal plausibility with the alternative, null hypothesis?
These and other issues are also confronted by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, whose overt hostility to religion, combined with the brashness and brilliance of his writing, has evoked fury among the faithful and consternation among the decorous. He has the effrontery to dispatch various "proofs" of god's existence: those of Aquinas, Anselm, and what he calls the arguments from beauty, from personal experience, from scripture, and from admired religious scientists. He also tackles the evolution of religion and what's bad about the "good book," while disputing the claim that religion is necessary for morality, all the while pulling no punches about why he is so unabashedly hostile to religion. (Honestly, is there anything hostile about suggesting that "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully"?)
Most effective is Dawkins' chapter titled "Why there almost certainly is no god," which not only sheds logical light on the so-called anthropic principle and the "worship of gaps," but – not surprisingly for a renowned evolutionary biologist – demolishes (yet again) the hoary "argument from design." This chestnut has had numerous stakes driven through its heart, but like a cinematic version of the undead, it keeps resurrecting itself, staggering, zombie-like and covered with flies, back into public view. Dawkins confronts the version concocted by renowned astronomer Fred Hoyle, who evidently knew more about stars than about evolution. According to Hoyle, the probability of living things having been created by a completely chance process is about that of a windstorm, blowing through a junkyard, spontaneously creating a Boeing 747.
Dawkins agrees that indeed, chance alone would not be up to the task but then shows, painstakingly, that natural selection is precisely the opposite of chance: its an extraordinarily efficient way of generating extreme nonrandomness. Moreover, god as ultimate explanatory device for complexity is especially depauperate since we cannot credibly maintain that god is less complex than a Boeing 747. In short, god, for Dawkins, is "the ultimate 747": insofar as the problem is explaining complexity, it hardly suffices to posit, as a satisfactory answer, the spontaneous and uncaused existence of something infinite orders of magnitude more complex.
Dawkins grants that god cannot be conclusively disproved, but he also urges that religion not be granted any special benefit of doubt. "if by 'God,' wrote Carl Sagan, "one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying … it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity." Dawkins adds that "The metaphysical or pantheistic God of the physicists is light years away from the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible, of priests, mullahs and rabbis, and of ordinary language. Deliberately to confuse the two is, in my opinion, an act of intellectual high treason."
The boilerplate, and politically safe if intellectually craven stance on science and religion has long been that the two are independent domains, the former telling what is and the latter, why (this was the gravimen of Stephen Jay Gould's Rocks of Ages, which argued for "nonoverlapping magesteria" between science and religion). Part of the attention-grabbing novelty of the Four Horsemen has been their refusal to abide by this dichotomy, their insistence that when religion makes egregiously false "truth claims" against science, it must be confronted, and that, moreover, religion itself can and should be "naturalized," that is, subjected to the same scrutiny that science brings to other phenomena.
This project is especially intense for America's most biologically astute philosopher, Daniel Dennett, whose Breaking the Spell involves breaking the taboo against looking skeptically and scientifically at religion. He doesn't like what he sees. And for Sam Harris (a graduate student in neurobiology when not endeavoring to épater les religieux) there is a felt need to take the United States in particular by the scruff of its neck and rub its nose in the dangers and absurdities of religious belief. His Letter to a Christian Nation was written in response to criticisms leveled by believers, following his earlier antireligious pronouncement, The End of Faith. His Letter is aptly named: more a letter than a book (perhaps coincidentally, many of the volumes herein considered are very slender). In both books, Harris is especially provocative in condemning not only religious excess, but even religious tolerance as, essentially, a "gateway drug" that opens the door not only to faith (irrationality, as Harris sees it) but also to its more extreme and violent manifestations. It would be interesting to see if, as the result of the recent drumbeat of antireligious books, the number of out-of-the-closet atheists increases, as others feel more validated in publicly affirming their unbelief … or if, turned off by the vehemence of the opponents, the ranks of faithful actually increases.
In any event, Harris is especially incensed at the consequences of what he views as religious extremism, and whereas The End of Faith was especially critical of Islam – although not sparing of Christianity or Judaism – Letter is explicitly concerned with fundamentalist Christianity and is unyielding in its alarm and disdain:
[I]f the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen—the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves—socially, economically, environmentally, or geopolitically. … The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.
Reacting to what he saw as the excesses of the Enlightenment, William Blake wrote his great poem, "Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau," which continued: "Mock on, mock on: 'tis all in vain!/ You throw the sand against the wind,/ And the wind blows it back again," and ends: "The Atoms of Democritus/ And Newton's Particles of Light/ Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,/ Where Israel's tents do shine so bright."
It has been said that the 20th century was dominated by physics, and the 19th, by chemistry and geology. The 21st? - at least, so far? Biology: with genomics, cloning, stem-cell research, neurobiology and evolutionary biology having replaced "rocket science" as emblematic of difficult/important. It is therefore notable – and not surprising – that biologists have been so much in the vanguard of science looking at religion, and that, moreover, other biologists have also been prominent in responding to the current, biology-inspired Enlightenment Redux. Instead of those Atoms of Democritus and Newton's Particles of Light, we have Darwin's evolution by natural selection and Dawkins' selfish genes. Mock on, mock on, Dawkins and Harris, Dennett and Sagan … Francis Collins and Joan Roughgarden have picked up Blake's mantle, pitching their bright, shining tents against the vain sands of your disbelief.
While the Four Horsemen resort to a modern version of Kant's sapere aude ("dare to know"), Collins and Roughgarden dare to believe, and to bespeak their faith. At the same time, neither are strangers to scientific knowing: Collins is a renowned medical geneticist, head of the Human Genome Project, and Roughgarden, a mathematical ecologist and evolutionary theorist. In The Language of God, Collins shares his personal journey from atheist to Evangelical Christian. (Throughout this extended Road-to-Damascus moment, C. S. Lewis – whose misogyny and militarism Collins delicately ignores – features prominently.) Collins is no fundamentalist, however; he acknowledges the consilience of modern evolutionary science, arguing passionately and effectively that "New Earth Creationists" do not only science but their own faith a disservice by denying reason and evidence. He approvingly quotes Galileo: "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." But he also claims that "The Big Bang cries out for a divine explanation." (And here I thought it cries out for physics.)
Collins argues that his faith comes primarily from two sources, the existence of what he calls "the Moral Law," and the "universal human longing for God." As to the former, is there really one – the - Moral Law? Some people feel it is lawful to suppress and kill those who disagree with them, or to worship idols, mutilate their genitals (typically with religious sanction), or define themselves as the only true human beings. Collins is greatly impressed, nonetheless, that people have a single, deep, shared knowledge of right and wrong, which he might find less impressive if he were more familiar with basic sociobiology. Thus, Collins seems not to understand that infanticidal male behavior in langur monkeys does not preclude the use of "altruism" at other times, and by other species, as a means of mate attraction, or that the evolutionary biology of altruism via kin selection is based on identity of genes via common descent, not just in ants but in any sexually reproducing organisms. Taken together or in various combinations, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, group selection, third-party effects, courtship possibilities, as well as simple susceptibility to social and cultural indoctrination - to which one might add the Kantian Categorical Imperative - provide biologists with more than enough for a Laplacean conclusion: god is no longer needed to explain Moral Law. (This is not to say that god is hereby excluded, just that the existence of such presumed Law is a thin reed upon which to lean religious faith, given that other, biologically verified interpretations exist.)
As to that longing for god, Francis Collins asks "Why would such a universal and uniquely human hunger exist, if it were not connected to some opportunity for fulfillment? … Why do we have a 'God-shaped vacuum' in our hearts and minds unless it is meant to be filled?" As his spiritual mentor, C. S. Lewis, pointed out "A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water." Many people would love to live forever. Does this mean that there is immortality? (I guess so: if they believe in the right religion.) Indeed, why would Janis Joplin have sung, "Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?" unless a Mercedes Benz exists? Evidently the existence of a Mercedes-shaped hole in Ms. Joplin's heart means that it was meant to be filled.
Collins is more persuasive, although certainly not original, when trotting out the Anthropic Principle, the argument that the universe is uniquely pre-tuned to bring about life in general and human life in particular. There are a number of physical constants and laws such that if any had been even slightly different, life might well have been impossible. For example, for roughly every billion quarks and antiquarks, there is an excess of one quark – otherwise, no matter. If the rate of expansion immediately after the Big Bang had been a teeny tiny fraction smaller than it was, the universe would have recollapsed long ago. If the strong nuclear forces holding atomic nuclei together had been just a smidgeon weaker, then only hydrogen would exist; if a hair stronger, all hydrogen would promptly have become helium, and the solar furnaces inside stars –which we can thank for the heavier elements – would never have existed.
Both Dawkins and Sagan also examine this argument, which Dawkins caricatures as "god-as-dial-twiddler." It is oddly tautological, in that if the universe were not as it is, we indeed would not be here to wonder about it. In Fred Hoyle's science fiction novel, The Black Cloud, it is explained that the probability of a golf ball landing on any particular spot is exceedingly low – and yet, it has to land somewhere! The Anthropic Principle can also be "solved" by multiple universes, of which ours could simply be the one in which we exist; this might apply not only to horizontally existing multi-verses, but to the same one occurring differently in time if there have been (and will be) unending expansions and contractions. Moreover, it isn't at all clear that the various physical dials are independent, or that the physical constants in the universe could be any different, given the nature of matter and energy. And isn't it more than a little arrogant to maintain that the gazillions of galaxies, with their mega-gazillions of stars, were expressly created by god so that he could bring forth Homo sapiens on the third planet from our particular sun, just so that we might "seek fellowship" with him?
The Language of God reveals Collins to be a decent, kind, generous and humane individual (ditto, by the way, for the writings of the Four Horsemen). Unlike the latter, however, Collins desperately hopes for a reconciliation – or at least, a lessening of animosity – between believers and non, and one hopes he might serve as an ambassador from science to evangelical Christianity, immunizing the latter against fear of the former. He would also like to missionize in the other direction. Recall the rabbi, visited by two members of his congregation who hold mutually contradictory positions, whereupon he reassures each that he is correct. The rabbi's wife reproves him, noting, "They can't both be right," whereupon the rabbi agrees, "You're right too!" Collins fervently maintains that both religion and science can be right.
Thus, he explicitly denies a strict interpretation of scripture – e.g., Adam and Eve, Noah's flood, Jonah inside the whale, etc. – eschewing literality when biblical accounts run obviously contrary to current science. At the same time, he believes fervently in other things, notably Jesus' resurrection, and the reality of a personal god who answers prayer. What, then, is his preferred basis for choosing to believe some Bible stories and not others? If Collins is simply clinging to those tenets that cannot be disproved, while disavowing those that can, then isn't he indulging in another incarnation of the "god of the gaps" that he very reasonably claims to oppose? What about, say, the Book of Revelations? Does the director of the Human Genome Project maintain that Jesus of Nazareth was born of a virgin and inseminated by the Holy Ghost? Was he haploid or diploid? Is it necessarily churlish to ask what it is, precisely, that a believer believes? In the devil, angels, eternal hellfire, damnation, archangels, incubi and succubi, walking on water, raising Lazarus?
Joan Roughgarden is more limited in her purview, specifically aiming at a reconciliation between Evolution and Christian Faith, rather than Collins' concern with Christian faith and science more generally. Advocates of "Theistic Evolution" (the claim that god chose to work via evolution, thereby eliminating any incompatibility) will doubtless applaud, while fundamentalist believers and materialist-minded unbelievers will not, although devotees of either will agree that Roughgarden is well-meaning, and adroit at summoning up New Testament parables in support of her nonconfrontationalist position.
Her bottom-line claim is that "the Bible is perfectly consistent with the two main facts of evolution – that all of life belongs to a common family tree and that species change over generations." But as to that "common family tree," what are we to make of the soul, which Roughgarden clearly believes is real, and uniquely possessed by human beings? How could "ensoulment" not bespeak a radical discontinuity, unless chimps, gorillas, orangs, etc., are granted souls (or semi-souls) as well? What about dogs? Crickets? Cantaloupes? Regarding "species change over generations," Genesis clearly asserts god's command that each living thing is to bring forth offspring "after his kind," which would certainly preclude changing into another kind.
Roughgarden ostensibly speaks from her scientific roots when she avers that "Jesus' teachings about generosity, kindness, love, and inclusion of all don't depend one whit on miracles." But on the next page, she recounts that "Even after his death, Jesus continued to downplay miracles. After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to a group of his disciples …" Wait a minute! If the resurrection of Jesus is not a miracle, what then is it? An article of faith, and thus exempt? A scientific fact?
Evolution and Christian Faith is a "plague-on-both-your houses" chastisement of "selfish genery" as well as of intolerant fundamentalism, and thus likely (along with Collins' book) to appeal to the "can't we all get along?" moderates among us: "We simply don't have to let ourselves get caught up in these polarizing positions," according to Roughgarden. "We can insist on a better tenor of discourse."
Edward O. Wilson – reigning dean of American organismal biologists – is also eager for reconciliation between science and religion, for the sake of policy, not polity. The Creation, written as an epistolary reaching-out to an unnamed southern Baptist preacher, is subtitled "an appeal to save life on earth." Wilson's journey was the inverse of Collins' – reared a pious Baptist in rural Alabama, he became a famous atheist scientist. Wilson's anguish, however, is not so much over the reduction in civility across the science-theology divide than about the reduction in planetary biodiversity, the imminence of large-scale, anthropogenic, species extinctions. Wilson's hope, powerfully expressed, is that doctrinal differences between religion and science could be put aside in favor of shared struggle defending the natural world: "Let us see, then, if we can, and you are willing, to meet on the near side of metaphysics in order to deal with the real world we share. … I suggest that we set aside our differences in order to save the Creation … Surely we can agree that each species, however inconspicuous and humble it may seem to us at this moment, is a masterpiece of biology, and well worth saving. … Prudence alone dictates that we act quickly to prevent the extinction of species and, with it, the pauperization of Earth's ecosystems – hence of the Creation."
In an oft-noted article published four decades ago in SCIENCE, historian Lynn White argued that the historical roots of our ecological crisis derive from the book of Genesis, which gave human beings their marching orders: to achieve dominion over nature. And to be sure, Judeo-Christian theologians have not generally distinguished themselves in support of nature (St. Francis and a few others excepted). Yet there is reason for hope, for the prospect of common cause on behalf of "the creation." The National Association of Evangelicals, for example, has become increasingly open to environmental defense, including concerns about global warming. This welcome development is based on precisely the switch from "dominion" to "stewardship" that Wilson advocates. Nor is it likely to be unique. I would bet that somewhere – even in that Heart of Darkness that constitutes the Bush Administration - there beats at least some sensitivity to preserving the Earth's natural treasures.
"However the tensions eventually play out between our opposing worldviews," Wilson observes to his imaginary pastor at the end of The Creation, "however science and religion wax and wane in the minds of men, there remains the earthborn, yet transcendental, obligation we are both morally bound to share."
Amen.
Comments
The only flaw with the GR/QM scenerio and the YEC/current-geological-science scenerio is that BOTH the GR and the QM are scientifically valid and mathematically accurate to within acceptable degrees of certainty.
Neither are "believed" in so much as supported by the evidence available at the time at which they are applicable. That they contradict at certain points is not, in itself, a problem of belief. Physicists who's fields reflect one or the other continue on as if the contradiction didn't exist, because at acceptable levels of certainty it doesn't. They're both science, and extremely accurate sciences in spite of the contradictions and funnyness that goes on when the very small works around the very big.
However,
YEC is not only NOT VERIFIABLE by any standard at all (unlike, say, "angels" or supernatural gods), it CONTRADICTS all evidence utterly.
This is not a case of believing in one while ignoring the other merely because at acceptable scientific levels of accuracy, "it works". This is believing something that totally contradicts ALL evidence at hand, even without the philosophical hand-waving of "God made it *look* like it was 4 billion years old, but its really young".
The comparison is inapplicable.
Posted by: Joe Shelby | February 22, 2007 06:34 PM
Joe, the point wasn't to suggest that YEC is like either GR or QM. Rather, the point was to ask whether using geological theories (which deep down, one doesn't believe) might be like working with GR (which deep down, one doesn't really believe).
I take it there's no case to be made here that YEC can be construed as scientifically supported belief. The worry is whether "good science" requires that you have a certain level of belief in the scientific theory you're using.
Posted by: Janet D. Stemwedel | February 22, 2007 06:50 PM
Does one really "not believe" in GR, or does one merely accept that GR is the best available explanation for the phenomena THAT ACTUALLY WORKS within that acceptable certainty. One can accept that GR is not "right" while at the same time accept that the better explanation eludes us, "but we're working on it" (which we are).
That's totally different from suggesting that one can accept that GR is not right by *believing* that "planets and stars spin on crystal spheres", the astronomical equivalent to YEC.
When a scientist says "I don't believe in GR" its completely different from when some "faithful" chap says "I don't believe in everything anybody has ever said about modern cosmology". They really are two different meanings to "believe" and the context remains key. The comparison has not resolved that contextual difference that changes the weight behind "believe".
Posted by: Joe Shelby | February 22, 2007 07:13 PM
Well, Janet, you're a philosopher, so you know that there are all kinds of tenable possibilities for empirical observations. The only thing that you can prove to exist is your own mind. Aside from that, there are all kinds of completely logical, if not incredibly likely, possibilities. The world could have been created 10 seconds ago. There is absolutely no way to disprove this hypothesis.
But as a scientist, you're committed to the idea that the most parsimonious explanation is likely the truth. There's all kinds of evidence that the world has been around a very long time. I can look at a sample of uranium and see that, on average, one atom decays into thorium about every ten seconds (and then through all the chains to lead). Then I can look at a piece of rock that should be all uranium, but 50% of it is lead. The most parsimonious explanation is that this piece of rock is billions of years old.
That's how scientists decide how the world works. Looking for empirical evidence to explain how things are the why they are. If I honestly believed that the world was created 10 seconds ago, and I would continue to do so no matter how many radiodating studies I did, I'm not being a scientist. I'm not actually looking for evidence about how the world really works. And as such, I have no motivation to be truthful about what I find, because it's all just a game anyway.
I think that's the real problem here. Science really relies on people being utterly open about their observations. That means being personally motivated to report the truth.
Posted by: Brian | February 22, 2007 07:31 PM
Joe, what does a belief matter to the work done? Surely what goes on inside your own head only becomes a problem if it goes beyond that and influences your work and writings. If I was to deny GR because I honestly accepted the Crystal Spheres hypothesis (don't worry, I have never even heard of this one before) would it really, honestly matter, so long as I didn't allow that prejudice into my work?
Lets be honest with ourselves, all scientists will have some prejudices. The whole point of peer review and standards of ethical conduct (including intellectual honesty in all its forms) is to minimise the impact of those prejudices.
In the case of the hypothetical here, the belief is kept entirely detached from the work produced (otherwise there would have been no way any PhD, or science fair sticker for that matter, could have been awarded). It would be no different to an atheist making an argument to Christians that referred to the bible. You may not believe it is true, but that doesn't stop you understanding the others viewpoint and using it to make arguments.
In this case you can see the paper written as almost a thought experiment. The same sort of view taken by the church with Galileo when his model made beautiful predictions but didn't fit with dogma. While such a stance is in no way scientific, it doesn't make the science done any less viable to those who do accept it.
There were no grounds to deny the PhD on the work done or the general religious beliefs held by this man. There may have been other reasons, such as straight up dishonesty in presenting data that he believes is false. But if he believes the data is real and his reading of it is the best that exists materially, then there is no real way to avoid admitting he did as much as any other PhD student in the way of science.
Posted by: Paul Schofield | February 22, 2007 07:39 PM
One thing I haven't seen brought up in any of these discussions is "Last Thursdayism". Last Thursdayism is the recognition that God could have created the world last Thursday with all of the historical elements required to make the Earth (and Universe) look like it is 13 billion years old.
It is entirely possible that Ross could believe that the Earth really was created by God 6000 (or so) years ago, but with all the attributes to make it look like 13 billion years. In that case, accepting that 13 billion year age "for scientific purposes" would be a necessary part of learning more about the mind of God.
Posted by: Ahcuah | February 22, 2007 07:53 PM
1) A basic part of being a scientist is being able to suspend your beliefs. Not your disbelief -- that's easy -- but your beliefs, and especially the ones you actually like!
2) The GR/QM confict is vastly overhyped. It applies solely under conditions which are not directly observable (even in principle, AFAIK), and in which one or the other theory may reasonably "forced out" by new findings or boundary conditions.
3) In the same vein, the ultimate test of a physical theory is technology -- that is, given the theory, can you use it to create devices or conditions which did not previously exist? Both GR and QM pass this test with flying colors. Besides the astronomical observations, relativistic effects become directly relevant when, say, building a GPS system. The system we're using explicitly accounts for those effects, and it works. QM becomes directly relevant when building very small electronic devices, such as those in the computer you're using to read this comment. That works too. QED.
Posted by: David Harmon | February 22, 2007 07:54 PM