Why does Stephen J. Gould argue that the Conflict Model is the wrong model for understanding science and religion? What is his argument for the Independence Model? Explain and analyze.
Please answer the following question:
Q: Why does Stephen J. Gould argue that the Conflict Model is the wrong model for understanding science and religion? What is his argument for the Independence Model? Explain and analyze.
Step 1 Do the reading for this week (may also need to apply reading from the previous weeks)
Step 2 Answer the question in detail, making sure that:
Define any concepts related to the question, properly explain the concepts, and provide examples.
Provide in-depth analysis and critical assessment.
Make sure that in providing your answer you use the articles I provide.
You must provide page numbers from the article if you quote or if you paraphrase.
If you do not cite (with page numbers) your grade drops by a letter grade on the assignment.
Submission Format
The paper is expected to:
Have a proper heading: name, date, Class, and SWA number.
12 font, double-spaced; 2 full pages.
Full Bibliography, and you can find the bibliography for your texts in the syllabus.
MLA or APA is fine but properly formatted.
Make sure that in providing your answer that you use the articles I provide.
You must provide page numbers from the article if you quote or if you paraphrase.
If you do not cite (with page numbers) your grade drops by a letter grade on the assignment.
Please submit your assignment by uploading a Microsoft Word Document or a PDF file, .rtf and .txt are accepted as well.
You must only use the articles provided for that weeks reading. If you do not, your grade will drop considerably. If you only use articles from another article, and none from the class, you will be docked two to three letter grades, plus whatever penalties for not answering the question
Requirements: 2,3
CHAPTER 4Ways of Relating Science and ReligionThe first major challenge to religion in an age of science is thesuccess of the methods of science. Science seems to provide the onlyreliable path to knowledge. Many people view science as objective,universal, rational, and based on solid observational evidence. Religion,by contrast, seems to be subjective, parochial, emotional, and based ontraditions or authorities that disagree with each other. The methods ofinquiry used in science, apart from any particular scientific discoveries ortheories, are the topic of part 2. Chapter 4 gives a broad description ofcontemporary views of the relationship between the methods of scienceand those of religion. Chapters 5 and 6 explore similarities anddifferences between the two fields and develop my own conclusionsconcerning the status of religious beliefs in an age of science.In order to give a systematic overview of the main options today, Ihave grouped them in this chapter under four headings: Conflict,Independence, Dialogue, and Integration. Particular authors may not fallneatly under anyone heading; a person may agree with adherents of agiven position on some issues but not on others. However, a broadsketch of alternatives will help us in making comparisons in laterchapters. After surveying these four broad patterns, I will suggestreasons for supporting Dialogue and, with some qualifications, certain156
versions of Integration.1157
I. CONFLICTA historical example of conflict was the Calileo case, which was partlythe product of conditions that no longer prevail: the authority ofAristotle and the defensive reactions and political rivalries in a Romanhierarchy that felt threatened by the Protestant Reformation. The Darwincase involved conflicting views, though the responses of boththeologians and scientists were far more diverse than the popular imageof “the warfare between science and religion.” The image of warfare iscommon today, partly because conflict between extreme views lendsitself to dramatic media coverage, while more subtle and complexintermediate positions tend to be neglected.Scientific materialism is at the opposite end of the theologicalspectrum from biblical literalism. But they share several characteristicsthat lead me to discuss them together. Both believe that there are seriousconflicts between contemporary science and classical religious beliefs.Both seek knowledge with a sure foundation—that of logic and sensedata, in the one case, that of infallible scripture, in the other. They bothclaim that science and theology make rival literal statements about thesame domain, the history of nature, so that one must choose betweenthem. I will suggest that scientific materialism and biblical literalism bothrepresent a misuse of science. The scientific materialist starts fromscience but ends by making broad philosophical claims. The biblicalliteralist moves from theology to make claims about scientific matters. Inboth schools of thought, the differences between the two disciplines arenot adequately respected.158
1. SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISMScientific materialists are the intellectual heirs of the materialism ofthe French Enlightenment, the empiricism of David Hume, and theevolutionary naturalism of the nineteenth century. Most of themsubscribe to two beliefs: (l) the scientific method is the only reliable pathto knowledge; (2) matter (or matter and energy) is the fundamental realityin the universe.The first is an epistemological assertion about the characteristics ofinquiry and knowledge. The second is a metaphysical assertion aboutthe characteristics of reality. The two assertions are linked by theassumption that only the entities and causes with which science dealsare real; only science can progressively disclose the nature of the real.In addition, many forms of materialism express reductionism.Epistemological reductionism claims that the laws and theories of all thesciences are in principle reducible to the laws of physics and chemistry.Metaphysical reductionism claims that the component parts of anysystem constitute its most fundamental reality. The materialist believesthat all phenomena will eventually be explained in terms of the actions ofmaterial components, which are the only effective causes in the world.Analysis of the parts of any system has, of course, been immenselyuseful in science, but I will suggest that the study of higherorganizational levels in larger wholes is also valuable.Let us consider the assertion that the scientific method is the onlyreliable form of understanding. Science starts from reproducible publicdata. Theories are formulated and their implications are tested againstexperimental observations. Additional criteria of coherence,comprehensiveness, and fruitfulness influence choice among theories.Religious beliefs are not acceptable, in this view, because religion lacks159
such public data, such experimental testing, and such criteria ofevaluation. Science alone is objective, open-minded, universal,cumulative, and progressive. Religious traditions, by contrast, are said tobe subjective, closed-minded, parochial, uncritical, and resistant tochange. We will see that historians and philosophers of science havequestioned this idealized portrayal of science, but many scientists acceptit and think it undermines the credibility of religious beliefs.Among philosophers, logical positivism from the 1920s to the 1940sasserted that scientific discourse provides the norm for all meaningfullanguage. It was said that the only meaningful statements (apart fromabstract logical relations) are empirical propositions verifiable by sensedata. Statements in ethics, metaphysics, and religion were said to beneither true nor false, but meaningless pseudo-statements, expressionsof emotion or preference devoid of cognitive significance. Whole areasof human language and experience were thus eliminated from seriousdiscussion because they were not subject to the verification that sciencewas said to provide. But critics replied that sense data do not provide anindubitable starting point in science, for they are already conceptuallyorganized and theory-laden. The interaction of observation and theory ismore complex than the positivists had assumed. Moreover, thepositivists had dismissed metaphysical questions but had often assumeda materialist metaphysics. The linguistic analysts argued that sciencecannot be the norm for all meaningful discourse because language hasmany differing uses and functions.Most of the late Carl Sagan’s TV series and book, Cosmos, is devotedto a fascinating presentation of the discoveries of modern astronomy,but at intervals he interjects his own philosophical commentary, forexample, “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”2 He saysthat the universe is eternal or else its source is simply unknowable.160
Sagan attacks Christian ideas of God at a number of points, arguing thatmystical and authoritarian claims threaten the ultimacy of the scientificmethod, which he says is “universally applicable.” Nature (which hecapitalizes) replaces God as the object of reverence. He expresses greatawe at the beauty, vastness, and interrelatedness of the cosmos. Sittingat the instrument panel from which he shows us the wonders of theuniverse, he is a new kind of high priest, not only revealing the mysteriesto us but telling us how we should live. We can indeed admire Sagan’sgreat ethical sensitivity and his deep concern for world peace andenvironmental preservation. But perhaps we should question hisunlimited confidence in the scientific method, on which he says weshould rely to bring in the age of peace and justice.The success of molecular biology in accounting for many of thebasic mechanisms of genetics and biological activity has often beentaken as a vindication of the reductionist approach. Thus Francis Crick,codiscoverer of the structure of DNA, wrote, “The ultimate aim of themodern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms ofphysics and chemistry.”3 I will argue in chapter 9 that there is in thebiological world a hierarchy of levels of organization. This would lead usto accept the importance of DNA and the role of molecular structures in allliving phenomena, but it would also allow us to recognize thedistinctiveness of higher-level activities and their influence on molecularcomponents.Jacques Monod’s Chance and Necessity gives a lucid account ofmolecular biology, interspersed with a defense of scientific materialism.He claims that biology has proved that there is no purpose in nature.“Man knows at last that he is alone in the universe’s unfeelingimmensity, out of which he emerged only by chance.”4 “Chance alone isthe source of all novelty, all creation, in the biosphere.” Monod161
espouses a thoroughgoing reductionism: “Anything can be reduced tosimple, obvious mechanical interactions. The cell is a machine. Theanimal is a machine. Man is a machine.”5 Consciousness is an illusionthat will eventually be explained biochemically. Monod asserts thathuman behavior is genetically determined; he says little about the role oflanguage, thought, or culture in human life. Value judgments arecompletely subjective and arbitrary. But Monod urges us to make thefree axiomatic choice that knowledge itself will be our supreme value. Headvocates “an ethics of knowledge,” but he does not show what thismight entail apart from the support of science.I submit that Monod’s reductionism is inadequate as an account ofpurposive behavior and consciousness in animals and human beings.There are alternative interpretations in which the interaction of chanceand law is seen to be more complex than Monod’s portrayal and notincompatible with some forms of theism. The biochemist and theologianArthur Peacocke gives chance a positive role in the exploration ofpotentialities inherent in the created order, which would be consistentwith the idea of divine purpose (though not with the idea of a precisepredetermined plan).6 Monod says that science proves that there is nopurpose in the cosmos. Surely it would be more accurate to say thatscience does not deal with divine purpose; it is not a fruitful concept inthe development of scientific theories.As another example, consider the explicit defense of scientificmaterialism by the sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson. His writings tracethe genetic and evolutionary origins of social behavior in insects,animals, and humans. He asks how self-sacrificial behavior could ariseand persist among social insects, such as ants, if their reproductiveability is thereby sacrificed. Wilson shows that such “altruistic” behaviorenhances the survival of close relatives with similar genes (in an ant162
colony, for example); selective pressures would encourage such self-sacrifice. He believes that all human behavior can be reduced to andexplained by its biological origins and present genetic structure. “It maynot be too much to say that sociology and the other social sciences, aswell as the humanities, are the last branches of biology to be included inthe Modern Synthesis.”7 The mind will be explained as “anepiphenomenon of the neural machinery of the brain.”Wilson holds that religious practices were a useful survivalmechanism in humanity’s earlier history because they contributed togroup cohesion. But he says that the power of religion will be goneforever when religion is explained as a product of evolution; it will bereplaced by a philosophy of “scientific materialism.”8 (If he wereconsistent, would not Wilson have to say that the power of science willalso be undermined when it is explained as a product of evolution? Doevolutionary origins really have anything to do with the legitimacy ofeither field?) He maintains that morality is the result of deep impulsesencoded in the genes and that “the only demonstrable function ofmorality is to keep the genes intact.”Wilson’s writing has received criticism from several quarters. Forexample, anthropologists have replied that most systems of humankinship are not organized in accord with coefficients of genetic similarityand that Wilson does not even consider cultural explanations for humanbehavior.9 In the present context, I would prefer to say that he hasdescribed an important area of biology suggesting some of theconstraints within which human behavior occurs, but he hasovergeneralized and extended it as an all-encompassing explanation,leaving no room for the causal efficacy of other facets of human life andexperience. We will consider his views further in chapter 10.163
The philosopher Daniel Dennett has defended a strong neo-Darwinist position, drawing from probability theory, cognitive science,and computer simulations. Evolution, he asserts, is the product of amindless, purposeless process. He vehemently rejects all forms of design,including the idea that Darwin set forth in some of his writings that thewhole evolutionary process and its laws are the product of design.Dennett claims that he is not a “greedy reductionist” (a person who triesto explain higher-level phenomena by direct appeal to the laws of thelowest level) but rather a “good reductionist” who acknowledges manylevels and “new principles of explanation appearing at each level” andseeks to relate the various levels to one another. But he holds that theidea of a unified consciousness is an illusion, and he seeks physicalexplanations of all mental events. “According to materialists, we can (inprinciple!) account for every mental phenomenon using the samephysical laws and raw materials that suffice to explain radioactivity,photosynthesis, reproduction, nutrition and growth.”10 Other scientificmaterialists whom I will discuss in later chapters include the biologistRichard Dawkins and the physicist Steven Weinberg.I suggest that these authors have failed to distinguish betweenscientific and philosophical questions. Scientists in their popularwritings tend to invoke the authority of science for ideas that are not partof science itself. Articles in journals of physics, chemistry, and biologydo not discuss materialism, theism, or other world views that providephilosophical interpretations of science. These are alternative beliefsystems, each claiming to encompass all reality.In their epistemology, these authors assume that the scientificmethod is the only reliable source of knowledge—an assumptionsometimes referred to by its critics as “scientism.” If science is the onlyacceptable form of understanding, explanation in terms of astronomical164
origins, evolutionary history, biochemical mechanisms, and otherscientific theories will exclude all other forms of explanation. I wouldreply that science relies on impersonal concepts and leaves out of itsinquiry the most distinctive features of personal life. Moreover, theconcept of God is not meant to be a hypothesis formulated to explainphenomena in the world in competition with scientific hypotheses. Beliefin God is primarily a commitment to a way of life in response todistinctive kinds of religious experience in communities formed byhistoric traditions; it is not a substitute for scientific research. Religiousbeliefs offer a wider framework of meaning in which particular events canbe contextualized. As a rough approximation, we may say that religionasks why and science asks how, though we wil1 see that this distinctionneeds considerable qualification.In their metaphysics, these authors have extended scientificconcepts beyond their scientific use to support comprehensivematerialistic philosophies. We have seen that Galileo and Descartesdistinguished primary qualities (such as mass and motion, which weresaid to be independent of the observer) from secondary qualities (suchas color and sound, which were held to be purely subjective). Theidentification of the real with measurable properties that can becorrelated by exact mathematical relationships started in the physicalsciences but influenced scientists in other fields and continues today.But I would argue that these properties of matter have been abstractedfrom the real world by ignoring the particularity of events and thenonquantifiable aspects of human experience. We do not have toconclude that matter alone is real or that mind, purpose, and human loveare only byproducts of matter in motion.11 Theism, in short, is notinherently in conflict with science, but it does conflict with ametaphysics of materialism.165
2. BIBLICAL LITERALISMIn previous chapters we have seen a variety of views of scripture andits relation to science. Medieval writers acknowledged diverse literaryforms and levels of truth in scripture, and they gave figurative orallegorical interpretations to many passages. Luther, Calvin, and theAnglicans continued this tradition, though some later Lutherans andCalvinists were more literalistic. We saw that a strict interpretation ofscripture by Catholic leaders was one factor in the condemnation ofGalileo, though other factors such as the legacy of Aristotle and theauthority of the church were equally significant. In Darwin’s day,evolution was taken as a chal1enge to design in nature and as achal1enge to the status of humanity, but it was also taken by somegroups as a challenge to scripture. Some defended biblical inerrancy andtotally rejected evolution. Yet most traditionalist theologians reluctantlyaccepted the idea of evolution—though sometimes only after making anexception for humanity, arguing that the soul is inaccessible to scientificinvestigation. Liberal theologians had already accepted the historicalanalysis of biblical texts (“higher criticism”), which traced the influenceof historical contexts and cultural assumptions on biblical writings. Theysaw evolution as consistent with their optimistic view of historicalprogress, and they spoke of evolution as God’s way of creating.In the twentieth century, the Roman Catholic church and most of themainline Protestant denominations have held that scripture is the humanwitness to the primary revelation, which occurred in the lives of theprophets and the life and person of Christ. Many traditionalists andevangelicals insist on the centrality of Christ without insisting on theinfallibility of a literal interpretation of the Bible. But smallerfundamentalist groups and a large portion of some historic166
denominations in the United States (a majority in the case of theSouthern Baptists) have maintained that scripture is inerrant throughout.The 1970s and 1980s saw a growth of fundamentalist membership andpolitical power. For many members of “the New Right” and “the MoralMajority,” the Bible provides not only certainty in a time of rapid change,but a basis for the defense of traditional values in a time of moraldisintegration (sexual permissiveness, drug use, increasing crime rates,and so forth).In the Scopes trial in 1925, it had been argued that the teaching ofevolution in the schools should be forbidden because it is contrary toscripture. More recently, a new argument called “scientific creationism”or “creation science” asserted that there is scientific evidence for thecreation of the world within the last few thousand years. The law thatwas passed by the Arkansas legislature in 1981 required that “creationisttheory” be given equal time with evolutionary theory in high schoolbiology texts and classes. The law specified that creationism should bepresented purely as scientific theory, with no reference to God or theBible.In 1982 the U.S. District Court overturned the Arkansas law, primarilybecause it favored a particular religious view, violating the constitutionalseparation of church and state. Although the bill itself made no explicitreference to the Bible, it used many phrases and ideas taken fromGenesis. The writings of the leaders of the creationist movement hadmade clear their religious purposes.12 Many of the witnesses against thebill were theologians or church leaders who objected to its theologicalassumptions.13The court also ruled that “creation science” is not legitimate science.It concluded that the scientific community, not the legislature or thecourts, should decide the status of scientific theories. It was shown that167
proponents of “creation science” had not even submitted papers toscientific journals, much less had them published. At the trial, scientificwitnesses showed that a long evolutionary history is central in almost allfields of science, including astronomy, geology, paleontology, andbiochemistry, as well as most branches of biology. They also replied tothe purported scientific evidence cited by creationists. Claims ofgeological evidence for a universal flood and for the absence of fossilsof transitional forms between species were shown to be dubious.14 In1987, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana creationism law; itsaid the law would have restricted academic freedom and supported aparticular religious viewpoint.“Creation science” is a threat to both religious and scientific freedom.It is understandable that the search for certainty in a time of moralconfusion and rapid cultural change has encouraged the growth ofbiblical literalism. But when absolutist positions lead to intolerance andattempts to impose particular religious views on others in a pluralisticsociety, we must object in the name of religious freedom. Some of thesame forces of rapid cultural change have contributed to the revival ofIslamic fundamentalism and the enforcement of orthodoxy in Iran andelsewhere.We can also see the danger to science when proponents ofideological positions try to use the power of the state to reshape science,whether it be in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Khomeini’s Iran, orcreationists in the United States. To be sure, scientists are inescapablyinfluenced by cultural assumptions and metaphysical presuppositions—as well as by economic forces, which in large measure determine thedirection of scientific development. The scientific community is nevercompletely autonomous or isolated from its social context, yet it must beprotected from political pressures that would dictate scientific168
conclusions. Science teachers must be free to draw from this largerscientific community in their teaching.Critics of evolutionary theory such as Phillip Johnson have raisedvalid objections when scientific materialists have promoted atheisticphilosophies as if they were part of science.15 But both sides err inassuming that evolutionary theory is inherently atheistic, and theythereby perpetuate the false dilemma of having to choose betweenscience and religion. The whole controversy reflects the shortcomings offragmented and specialized higher education. The training of scientistsseldom includes any exposure to the history and philosophy of scienceor any reflection on the relation of science to society, to ethics, or toreligious thought. On the other hand, the clergy has little familiarity withscience and is hesitant to discuss controversial subjects in the pulpit.The remainder of this chapter explores alternatives to these two extremesof scientific materialism and biblical literalism.169
II. INDEPENDENCEOne way to avoid conflicts between science and religion is to viewthe two enterprises as totally independent and autonomous. Each has itsown distinctive domain and its characteristic methods that can bejustified on its own terms. Proponents of this view say there are twojurisdictions and each party must keep off the other’s turf. Each musttend to its own business and not meddle in the affairs of the other. Eachmode of inquiry is selective and has its limitations. This separation intowatertight compartments is motivated, not simply by the desire to avoidunnecessary conflicts, but also by the desire to be faithful to thedistinctive character of each area of life and thought. Some authorsassert that science and religion have differing perspectives on a commondomain rather than differing domains of inquiry. We will consider firstsome claims that their methods of inquiry differ radically and then theclaim that the languages of science and religion serve very differentfunctions in human life.170
1. CONTRASTING METHODSMany evangelicals and conservative Christians have continued theheritage of the traditionalists of the nineteenth century. They givescripture a central role without insisting on biblical literalism ordefending “creation science.” They emphasize Christ’s atoning deathand the sudden conversion of the believer in accepting Christ aspersonal savior. They look to the transforming power of the gospel,which is neither threatened nor supported by modern science. For manyevangelicals who are not literalists, science and religion are essentiallyindependent spheres of human life, though some have defended naturaltheology with arguments for design starting from the Big Bang inastronomy or by pointing to the problems faced by scientific theories inaccounting for the origin of life or consciousness.16Two theological movements have made a more explicit separation ofscience and religion. They do so by contrasting the methods of me twofields, continuing the legacy of Kant. Protestant neo-orthodoxy soughtto recover the Reformation emphasis on the centrality of Christ and theprimacy of revelation, while fully accepting the results of modern biblicalscholarship and scientific research. According to Karl Barth and hisfollowers, God can be known only as revealed in Christ andacknowledged in faith. God is the transcendent, the wholly other,unknowable except as self-disclosed. Natural theology is suspectbecause it relies on human reason. Religious faith depends entirely ondivine initiative, not on human discovery of the kind occurring inscience. The sphere of God’s action is history, not nature. Scientists arefree to carry out their work without interference from theology, and viceversa, since their methods and their subject matter are totally dissimilar.Science is based on human observation and reason, while theology is171
based on divine revelation.17In this view, the Bible must be taken seriously but not literally.Scripture is not itself revelation; it is a fallible human record witnessingto revelatory events. The locus of divine activity was not the dictation ofa text, but the lives of persons and communities: Israel, the prophets, theperson of Christ, and those in the early church who responded to him.The biblical writings reflect diverse interpretations of these events; wemust acknowledge the human limitations of their authors and the culturalinfluences on their thought. Their opinions concerning scientificquestions reflect the prescientific speculations of ancient times. Weshould read the opening chapters of Genesis as a symbolic portrayal ofthe basic relation of humanity and the world to God, a message abouthuman creatureliness and the goodness of the natural order. Thesereligious meanings can be separated from the ancient cosmology inwhich they were expressed.Another movement advocating a sharp separation of the spheres ofscience and religion is existentialism. Here the contrast is between therealm of personal selfhood and the realm of impersonal objects. Theformer is known only through subjective involvement; the latter isknown in the objective detachment typical of the scientist. Common to allexistentialists—whether atheistic or theistic—is the conviction that wecan know authentic human existence only by being personally involvedas unique individuals making free decisions. The meaning of life is foundonly in commitment and action, never in the spectatorial, rationalisticattitude of the scientist searching for abstract general concepts anduniversal laws.Religious existentialists say that God is encountered in theimmediacy and personal participation of an I-Thou relationship, not inthe detached analysis and manipulative control characterizing the I-It172
relationships of science. The theologian Rudolf Bultmann acknowledgesthat the Bible often uses objective language in speaking of God’s acts,but he proposes that we can retain the original experiential meaning ofsuch passages by translating them into the language of human self-understanding, the language of hopes and fears, choices and decisions,and new possibilities for our lives. Theological formulations must bestatements about the transformation of human life by a newunderstanding of personal existence. Such affirmations have noconnection with scientific theories about external events in theimpersonal order of a law-abiding world.18Langdon Gilkey, in his earlier writing and in his testimony at theArkansas trial, expresses many of these themes. He makes the followingdistinctions: (1) Science seeks to explain objective, public, repeatabledata. Religion asks about the existence of order and beauty in the worldand the experiences of our inner life (such as guilt, anxiety, andmeaninglessness, on the one hand, and forgiveness, trust, andwholeness, on the other). (2) Science asks objective how questions.Religion asks personal why questions about meaning and purpose andabout our ultimate origin and destiny. (3) The basis of authority inscience is logical coherence and experimental adequacy. The finalauthority in religion is God and revelation, understood through personsto whom enlightenment and insight were given, and validated in our ownexperience. (4) Science makes quantitative predictions that can be testedexperimentally. Religion must use symbolic and analogical languagebecause God is transcendent.19In the context of the trial, it was an effective strategy to insist thatscience and religion ask quite different questions and use quite differentmethods. It provided methodological grounds for criticizing the attemptsof biblical literalists to derive scientific conclusions from scripture. More173
specifically, Gilkey argued that the doctrine of creation is not a literalstatement about the history of nature but a symbolic assertion that theworld is good and orderly and dependent on God in every moment oftime—a religious assertion essentially independent of both prescientificbiblical cosmology and modern scientific cosmology.In some of his other writings, Gilkey has developed themes that wewill consider under the heading of Dialogue. He says there is a“dimension of ultimacy” in the scientist’s passion to know, commitmentto the search for truth, and faith in the rationality and uniformity ofnature. For the scientist, these constitute what Tillich called an “ultimateconcern.” But Gilkey states there are dangers when science is extendedto a total naturalistic philosophy or when science and technology areascribed a redemptive and saving power, as occurs in the liberal myth ofprogress through science. Both science and religion can be demonicwhen they are used in the service of particular ideologies and when theambiguity of human nature is ignored.20Thomas Torrance has developed further some of the distinctions inneo-orthodoxy. Theology is unique, he says, because its subject matteris God. Theology is “a dogmatic or positive and independent scienceoperating in accordance with the inner law of its own being, developingits distinctive modes of inquiry and its essential forms of thought underthe determination of its given subject-matter.”21 God infinitelytranscends all creaturely reality and “can be known only as he hasrevealed himself,” especially in the person of Christ. We can onlyrespond in fidelity to what has been given to us, allowing our thinking tobe determined by the given.174
2. DIFFERING LANGUAGESAn even more effective way of separating science and religion is tointerpret them as languages that are unrelated because their functionsare totally different. The logical positivists had taken scientificstatements as the norm for all discourse and had dismissed asmeaningless any statement not subject to empirical verification. The laterlinguistic analysts, in response, insisted that differing types of languageserve differing functions not reducible to each other. Each “languagegame” (as Wittgenstein and his successors called it) is distinguished bythe way it is used in a social context. Science and religion do totallydifferent jobs, and neither should be judged by the standards of theother. Scientific language is used primarily for prediction and control. Atheory is a useful tool for summarizing data, correlating regularities inobservable phenomena, and producing technological applications.Science asks carefully delimited questions about natural phenomena. Wemust not expect it to do jobs for which it was not intended, such asproviding an overall world view, a philosophy of life, or a set of ethicalnorms. Scientists are no wiser than anyone else when they step out oftheir laboratories and speculate beyond strictly scientific work.22The distinctive function of religious language, according to thelinguistic analysts, is to recommend a way of life, to elicit a set ofattitudes, and to encourage allegiance to particular moral principles.Much of religious language is connected with ritual and practice in theworshiping community. It may also express and lead to personal religiousexperience. One of the great strengths of the linguistic movement is thatit does not concentrate on religious beliefs as abstract systems ofthought but looks at the way religious language is actually used in thelives of individuals and communities. Linguistic analysts draw on175
empirical studies of religion by sociologists, anthropologists, andpsychologists, as well as the literature produced within religioustraditions.Some scholars have studied diverse cultures and concluded thatreligious traditions are ways of life that are primarily practical andnormative. Stories, rituals, and religious practices bind individuals incommunities of shared memories, assumptions, and strategies for living.Other scholars claim that religion’s primary aim is the transformation ofthe person. Religious literature speaks extensively of experiences ofliberation from guilt through forgiveness, trust overcoming anxiety, orthe transition from brokenness to wholeness. Eastern traditions talkabout liberation from bondage to suffering and self-centeredness in theexperiences of peace, unity, and enlightenment.23 These are obviouslyactivities and experiences having little to do with science.George Lindbeck compares the linguistic view with two other viewsof religious doctrines:1. In the propositional view, doctrines are truth claims aboutobjective realities. “Christianity, as traditionally interpreted, claims to betrue, universally valid, and supernaturally revealed.”24 If doctrines aretrue or false, and rival doctrines are mutually exclusive, there can be onlyone true faith. The propositional view is a form of realism, for it believesthat we can make statements about reality as it exists in itself.2. In the expressive view, doctrines are symbols of inner experiences.Liberal theology has held that the experience of the holy is found in allreligions. Since there can be diverse symbolizations of the same coreexperience, adherents of different traditions can learn from each other.This view tends to stress the private and individual side of religion, withless emphasis on communal aspects. If doctrines are interpretations ofreligious experience, they are not likely to conflict with scientific theories176
about nature.3. In the linguistic view, which Lindbeck himself advocates,doctrines are rules of discourse correlated with individual and communalforms of life. Religions are guides to living; they are “ways of life whichare learned by practicing them.” Lindbeck argues that individualexperience cannot be our starting point because it is already shaped byprevailing conceptual and linguistic frameworks. His approach allows usto accept the particularity of each religious tradition without makingexclusive claims for it. This is a nonrealist or instrumentalist position. Itdoes not assume a universal truth or an underlying universal experience;it sees each cultural system as self-contained. By minimizing the role ofbeliefs and truth claims, the linguistic view avoids conflicts betweenscience and theology that can occur in the propositional view, yet itescapes the individualism and subjectivity of the expressive view.The three movements we have been considering—neo-orthodoxy,existentialism, and linguistic analysis—all understand religion andscience to be independent and autonomous forms of life and thought.Each discipline is selective and has its limitations. Every disciplineabstracts from the totality of experience those features in which it isinterested. The astronomer Arthur Eddington once told a delightfulparable about a man studying deep-sea life using a net on a three-inchmesh. After bringing up repeated samples, the man concluded that thereare no deep-sea fish less than three inches in length. Our methods offishing, Eddington suggests, determine what we can catch. If science isselective, it cannot claim that its picture of reality is complete.25I believe that the Independence thesis is a good starting point or firstapproximation. It preserves the distinctive character of each enterprise,and it is a useful strategy for responding to both types of conflictmentioned earlier. Religion does indeed have its characteristic methods,177
questions, attitudes, functions, and experiences, which are distinct fromthose of science. But there are serious difficulties in each of theseproposals.As I see it, neo-orthodoxy rightly stresses the centrality of Christand the prominence of scripture in the Christian tradition. It is moremodest in its claims than biblical literalism, since it acknowledges the roleof human interpretation in scripture and doctrine. But in most versions it,too, holds that revelation and salvation occur only through Christ, whichseems to me problematic in a pluralistic world. Most neo-orthodoxauthors emphasize divine transcendence and give short shrift toimmanence. The gulf between God and the world is decisively bridgedonly in the incarnation. While Barth and his followers do indeedelaborate a doctrine of creation, their main concern is with the doctrine ofredemption. Nature tends to be treated as the unredeemed setting forhuman redemption, though it may participate in the eschatologicalfulfillment at the end of time.Existentialism rightly puts personal commitment at the center ofreligious faith, but it ends by privatizing and interiorizing religion to theneglect of its communal aspects. If God acts exclusively in the realm ofselfhood, not in the realm of nature, the natural order is devoid ofreligious significance, except as the impersonal stage for the drama ofpersonal existence. This anthropocentric framework, concentrating onhumanity alone, offers little protection against the modern exploitation ofnature as a collection of impersonal objects. If religion deals with Godand the self, and science deals with nature, who can say anything aboutthe relationship between God and nature or between the self and nature?To be sure, religion is concerned with the meaning of personal life, butthis cannot be divorced from belief in a meaningful cosmos. I will alsosuggest that existentialism exaggerates the contrast between an178
impersonal, objective stance in science and the personal involvementessential to religion. Personal judgment does enter the work of thescientist, and rational reflection is an important part of religious inquiry.Finally, linguistic analysis has helped us to see the diversity offunctions of religious language. Religion is indeed a way of life and notsimply a set of ideas and beliefs. But the religious practice of acommunity, including worship and ethics, presupposes distinctivebeliefs. Against instrumentalism, which sees both scientific theories andreligious beliefs as human constructs useful for specific humanpurposes, I advocate a critical realism holding that both communitiesmake cognitive claims about realities beyond the human world. Wecannot remain content with a plurality of unrelated languages if they arelanguages about the same world. If we seek a coherent interpretation ofall experience, we cannot avoid the search for a unified world view.If science and religion were totally independent, the possibility ofconflict would be avoided, but the possibility of constructive dialogueand mutual enrichment would also be ruled out. We do not experience lifeas neatly divided into separate compartments; we experience it inwholeness and interconnectedness before we develop particulardisciplines to study different aspects of it. There are also biblicalgrounds for the conviction that God is Lord of our total lives and ofnature, rather than of a separate “religious” sphere. The articulation of atheology of nature that will encourage a strong environmental concern isalso a critical task today. I will argue that none of the options consideredabove is adequate to that task.179
III. DIALOGUEDialogue is a diverse group of views that go beyond theIndependence model but portray relationships between science andreligion that are not as close or as direct as those in the Integrationmodel. Dialogue starts from general characteristics of science or ofnature rather than from particular scientific theories such as thoseinvoked by proponents of Integration. We will look successively at (1)Presuppositions and Limit Questions, (2) Methodological Parallels, and(3) Nature-centered Spirituality.180
I. PRESUPPOSITIONS AND LIMIT QUESTIONSLimit questions are ontological questions raised by the scientificenterprise as a whole but not answered by the methods of science. (Theycan also be called “boundary questions,” but the term may bemisinterpreted as referring only to spatial or temporal boundaries or the“boundary conditions” that are required in making predictions fromscientific laws.)In chapter 1 we noted that historians have asked why modernscience arose in the Christian West among all world cultures. Weexplored the claim that the doctrine of creation helped to set the stage forscientific activity. Both Greek and biblical thought asserted that theworld is orderly and intelligible. But the Greeks held that this order isnecessary and that therefore one can deduce its structure from firstprinciples. Only biblical thought held that the world’s order is contingentrather than necessary. If God created both form and matter, the world didnot have to be as it is, and one has to observe it to discover the detailsof its order. Moreover, while nature is real and good, it is not itself divine,as many ancient cultures held. Humans are therefore permitted toexperiment on nature.26 The “desacralization” of nature encouragedscientific study, though it also—along with other economic and culturalforces—contributed to subsequent environmental destruction and theexploitation of nature.I believe the case for the historical contribution of Christianity to therise of science is convincing. Some theologians have claimed that theismremains an implicit presupposition or logical requirement of sciencetoday, even when scientists do not acknowledge it.27 But I would arguethat once science was well established, its own success was sufficientjustification for many scientists, without the need for religious181
legitimation. Theistic beliefs are clearly not explicit presuppositions ofscience, since many atheistic or agnostic scientists do first-rate workwithout them. One can simply accept the contingency and intelligibilityof nature as givens and devote one’s efforts to investigating the detailedstructure of its order. Yet if one does raise these wider questions, one isperhaps more open to religious answers. For many scientists, exposureto the order of the universe, as well as its beauty and complexity, is atleast an occasion of wonder and reverence.We have seen that Torrance maintains the characteristic neo-orthodox distinction between human discovery and divine revelation.But he also says that science raises fundamental questions that it cannotanswer. Science shows us an order that is both rational and contingent(that is, its laws and initial conditions were not necessary). It is thecombination of contingency and intelligibility that prompts us to searchfor new and unexpected forms of rational order. The theologian holdsthat God is the creative ground and reason for the contingent butrational order of the universe. “Correlation with that rationality in Godgoes far to account for the mysterious and baffling nature of theintelligibility inherent in the universe, and explains the profound sense ofreligious awe it calls forth from us and which, as Einstein insisted, is themainspring of Science.”28The theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg has explored methodologicalissues in some detail. He accepts Karl Popper’s contention that thescientist proposes testable hypotheses and then attempts to refute themexperimentally. Pannenberg claims that the theologian can also useuniversal rational criteria in critically examining religious beliefs.However, the parallels eventually break down, he says, because theologyis the study of reality as a whole; reality is an unfinished process whosefuture we can only anticipate, since it does not yet exist. Moreover,182
theology is interested in unique and unpredictable historical events.Here the theologian tries to answer another kind of limit question withwhich the scientific method cannot deal, a limit not of initial conditions orontological foundations but of openness toward the future.29Three Roman Catholic authors, Ernan McMullin, Karl Rahner, andDavid Tracy, seem to me to be advocates of Dialogue, though withvarying emphases. McMullin starts with a sharp distinction betweenreligious and scientific statements that resembles the Independenceposition. God as primary cause acts through the secondary causesstudied by science, but these are on radically different levels withindifferent orders of explanation. On its own level, the scientific account iscomplete and without gaps. McMullin is critical of all attempts to derivearguments for God from phenomena unexplained by science; he isdubious about arguments from design or from the directionality ofevolution. God sustains the whole natural sequence and “is responsibleequally and uniformly for all events.” The theologian has no stake inparticular scientific theories, including astrophysical theories about theearly cosmos.30McMullin maintains that the doctrine of creation is not anexplanation of cosmological beginnings, but an assertion of the world’sabsolute dependence on God in every moment. The intent of Genesiswas not to specify that there was a first moment in time. Moreover, theBig Bang theory does not prove that there was a beginning in time, sincethe current expansion could be one phase of an oscillating or cyclicuniverse. He concludes, “What one cannot say is, first, that the Christiandoctrine of creation ‘supports’ the Big Bang model, or, second, that theBig Bang model ‘supports’ the Christian doctrine of creation.”31 But hesays that for God to choose the initial conditions and laws of the183
universe would not involve any gaps or violations of the sequence ofnatural causes. McMullin denies that there is any strong logicalconnection between scientific and religious assertions, but he doesendorse the search for a looser kind of compatibility. The aim should be“consonance but not direct implication,” which implies that in the endthe two sets of assertions are not, after all, totally independent.For Karl Rahner, the methods and the content of science andtheology are independent, but there are important points of contact andcorrelations to be explored. God is known primarily through scripture andtradition, but he is dimly and implicitly known by all persons as theinfinite horizon within which every finite object is apprehended. Kanthad asked about the conditions that make knowledge possible, andRahner asks the same question in a neo-Thomist framework. We know byabstracting form from matter; in the mind’s pure desire to know there is adrive beyond every limited object toward the Absolute. Authentichuman experience of love and honesty are experiences of grace.32Rahner does also take up particular scientific theories. He holds thatthe classical doctrines of human nature and of Christology fit well withan evolutionary viewpoint. The human being is a unity of matter andspirit, which are distinct but can only be understood in relation to eachother. Science studies matter and provides only part of the whole picture,for we know ourselves to be free, self-conscious agents. Evolution—from matter to life, mind, and spirit—is God’s creative action throughnatural causes, which reach their goal in humanity and the incarnation.Matter develops out of its inner being in the direction of spirit,empowered to achieve an active self-transcendence in higher levels ofbeing. The incarnation is at the same time the climax of the world’sdevelopment and the climax of God’s self-expression. Rahner insists thatcreation and incarnation are parts of a single process of God’s self-184
communication. Christ as true humanity is a moment in biologicalevolution that has been oriented toward its fulfillment in him.33David Tracy sees a religious dimension in science. He holds thatreligious questions arise at the horizons or limit-situations of humanexperience. In everyday life, these limits are encountered in experiencesof anxiety and confrontation with death, as well as in joy and basic trust.He describes two kinds of limit-situations in science: ethical issues in theuses of science, and presuppositions or conditions for the possibility ofscientific inquiry. Tracy maintains that the intelligibility of the worldrequires an ultimate rational ground. For the Christian, the sources forunderstanding that ground are the classic religious texts and thestructures of human experience. All our theological formulations,however, are limited and historically conditioned. Tracy is open to thereformulation of traditional doctrines in contemporary philosophicalcategories; he is sympathetic to many aspects of process philosophyand recent work in language and hermeneutics.34How much room is there for the reformulation of classical theologicaldoctrines in the light of science? If the points of contact between scienceand theology refer only to basic presuppositions and limit questions,reformulation will seldom be called for. But if there are some points ofcontact between particular doctrines and particular scientific theories(such as the doctrine of creation in relation to evolution or astronomy),and if it is acknowledged that all doctrines are historically conditioned,there is in principle the possibility of significant doctrinal developmentand reformulation, as suggested by advocates of Integration.185
2. METHODOLOGICAL PARALLELSThe positivists had portrayed science as objective, meaning that itstheories are validated by clear-cut criteria and are tested by agreementwith indisputable, theory-free data. Both the criteria and the data ofscience were held to be independent of the individual subject andunaffected by cultural influences. By contrast, religion seemedsubjective. We have seen that existentialists made much of the contrastbetween objective detachment in science and personal involvement inreligion.Since the 1950s, these sharp contrasts have been increasingly calledinto question. Science, it appeared, is not as objective, nor religion assubjective, as had been claimed. There may be differences of emphasisbetween the fields, but the distinctions are not as absolute as had beenasserted. Scientific data are theory-laden, not theory-free. Theoreticalassumptions enter the selection, reporting, and interpretation of what aretaken to be data. Moreover, theories do not arise from logical analysis ofdata but from acts of creative imagination in which analogies and modelsoften play a role. Conceptual models help us to imagine what is notdirectly observable.Many of these same characteristics are present in religion. If the dataof religion include religious experience, rituals, and scriptural texts, suchdata are even more heavily laden with conceptual interpretations. Inreligious language, too, metaphors and models are prominent, asdiscussed in my writing and in that of Sallie McFague, Janet Soskice, andMary Gerhart and Allan Russell.35 Clearly, religious beliefs are notamenable to strict empirical testing, but they can be approached withsome of the same spirit of inquiry found in science. The scientific criteriaof coherence, comprehensiveness, and fruitfulness have their parallels in186
religious thought.Thomas Kuhn’s influential book, The Structure of ScientificRevolutions, maintained that both theories and data in science aredependent on the prevailing paradigms of the scientific community. Hedefined a paradigm as a cluster of conceptual, metaphysical, andmethodological presuppositions embodied in a tradition of scientificwork. With a new paradigm, the old data are reinterpreted and seen innew ways, and new kinds of data are sought. In the choice betweenparadigms, there are no rules for applying scientific criteria. Theirevaluation is an act of judgment by the scientific community. Anestablished paradigm is resistant to falsification, since discrepanciesbetween theory and data can be set aside as anomalies or reconciled byintroducing ad hoc hypotheses.36Religious traditions can also be looked on as communities that sharea common paradigm. The interpretation of the data (such as religiousexperience and historical events) is even more paradigm-dependent thanin the case of science. There is a greater use of ad hoc assumptions toreconcile apparent anomalies, so religious paradigms are even moreresistant to falsification. We will compare the role of paradigms in scienceand religion in the next chapter.The status of the observer in science has also been reconsidered.The earlier accounts had identified objectivity with the separability, ofthe observer from the object of observation. But in quantum physics theinfluence of the process of observation on the system observed iscrucial. In relativity, the most basic measurements, such as the mass,velocity, and length of an object depend on the frame of reference of theobserver. Stephen Toulmin traces the change from the assumption of adetached spectator to the recognition of the participation of theobserver; he cites examples from quantum physics, ecology, and the187
social sciences. Every experiment is an action in which we are agents, notjust observers. The observer as subject is a participant inseparable fromthe object of observation.37Michael Polanyi envisions a harmony of method over the wholerange of knowledge and says that this approach overcomes thebifurcation of reason and faith. Polanyi’s unifying theme is the personalparticipation of the knower in all knowledge. In science, the heart ofdiscovery is creative imagination, which is a very personal act. Sciencerequires skills that, like riding a bicycle, cannot be formally specified butonly learned by example and practice. In all knowledge we have to seepatterns in wholes. In recognizing a friend’s face or in making a medicaldiagnosis, we use many clues but cannot identify all the particulars onwhich our judgment of a total pattern relies. Polanyi holds that theassessment of evidence is always an act of discretionary personaljudgment. No rules specify whether an unexplained discrepancy betweentheory and experiment should be set aside as an anomaly or taken toinvalidate the theory. Participation in a community of inquiry is a safe-guard against subjectivity, though it never removes the burden ofindividual responsibility.38 Polanyi holds that all these characteristics areeven more important in religion. Here personal involvement is greater, butnot to the exclusion of rationality and universal intent. Participation inthe historical tradition and present experience of a religious community isessential.39Several authors have recently invoked similar methodologicalparallels. The physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne givesexamples of personal judgment and theory-laden data in both fields. Thedata for a religious community are its scriptural records and its history ofreligious experience. Similarities exist between the fields in that “each is188
corrigible, having to relate theory to experience, and each is essentiallyconcerned with entities whose unpicturable reality is more subtle thanthat of naive objectivity.”40 The philosopher Holmes Rolston holds thatreligious beliefs interpret and correlate experience, much as scientifictheories interpret and correlate experimental data. Beliefs can be testedby criteria of consistency and congruence with experience. But Rolstonacknowledges that personal involvement is more total in the case ofreligion, since the primary goal is the reformation of the person.Moreover, there are other significant differences: science is interested incauses, while religion is interested in personal meanings.41Such methodological comparisons seem to me illuminating for bothfields, and I discuss them further in the next two chapters. Here I willonly note several problems in the use of this approach:1. In the attempt to legitimate religion in an age of science, it istempting to dwell on similarities and pass over differences. Althoughscience is indeed a more theory-laden enterprise than the positivists hadrecognized, it is clearly more objective than religion in each of the sensesthat have been mentioned. The kinds of data from which religion drawsare radically different from those in science, and the possibility of testingreligious beliefs is more limited.2. In reacting to the absolute distinctions presented by adherents ofthe Independence thesis, it would be easy to minimize the distinctivefeatures of religion. In particular, by treating religion as an intellectualsystem and talking only about religious beliefs, one may distort thediverse characteristics of religion as a way of life, which the linguisticanalysts have so well described. Religious belief must always be seen inthe context of the life of the religious community and in relation to thegoal of personal transformation.3.Consideration of methodology is an important but preliminary task189
in the dialogue of science and religion. The issues tend to be somewhatabstract and therefore of more interest to philosophers of science andphilosophers of religion than to scientists or theologians and religiousbelievers. Yet methodological issues have rightly come under newscrutiny in both communities. Furthermore, if we acknowledgemethodological similarities we are more likely to encourage attention tosubstantive issues. If theology at its best is a reflective enterprise thatcan develop and grow, it can be open to new insights, including thosederived from the theories of science.190
3. NATURE-CENTERED SPIRITUALITYIn contrast to the philosophical approach of the authors who discusslimit questions and methodological parallels, another group of authorsresponds to nature in personal and experiential ways. In writing aboutthe sacred in nature they resemble the poets of the romantic movementof the late eighteenth century. Like Thoreau, Emerson, and John Muir inthe nineteenth century, they describe the experience of a religiousdimension in nature. The earlier poets and nature writers were critical ofthe attitudes toward nature engendered by science, and they could beclassified with advocates of the Independence thesis. But someexponents of a nature-centered spirituality today are more interested inscience, and they engage in what can be considered a form of Dialogue.The term spirituality refers to a religious outlook based on individualexperience rather than on religious institutions or formal theologicaldoctrines.Some scientists have described religious responses evoked by theirwork as scientists but going beyond science itself. Rachel Carson’sSilent Spring and other writings drew from her scientific knowledge, butshe also showed a reverence for the community of living things. LorenEiseley recorded his awe at the web of life and the ties that connect us tomillions of years of evolutionary history. “For many of us the Biblicalbush still burns and there is a deep mystery in the heart of a simpleseed.” He marveled at the amazing powers of life which is “but one maskworn by the Great Face behind.”42 Aldo Leopold wrote with theknowledge of a naturalist but also with the imagination of a poet inportraying his holistic vision of the unity of life.43The American nature writer Annie Dillard finds a living presence innature. In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek she describes moments of illumination191
in the seemingly insignificant details of natural life, concerning whichshe is well informed by reading from scientific sources. For her, abackyard tree ablaze with flame is a glimpse of eternity. There is a sublimebeauty in nature, but it is not a peaceful and harmonious order. Theprofusion of creatures seems extravagant, wasteful, and often unruly anduntamed. There is a dark side to creation, a violence, cruelty, and deaththat can be terrifying. But this does not negate her gratitude for creationas a gift. “Beauty itself is the fruit of the creator’s exuberance that grewsuch a tangle, and the grotesques and horrors bloom from that same freegrowth, that intricate scramble and twine up and down the conditions oftime.”44The theologian Matthew Fox expresses awe and wonder at the newscientific story of the universe, which can inspire our gratitude. He urgesus to celebrate the sacredness of nature in song, dance, ritual, and art aswell as in theological reflection. He is critical of the Christian tradition foremphasizing original sin and redemption and for neglecting the idea ofcreation as “original blessing.” But he approves of certain medievalmystics who were life affirming and creation centered, such as MeisterEckhart, Hildegarde of Bingen, and Julian of Norwich. He suggests thatin meditation we can realize the divinity within us and within nature. Acreation-centered spirituality can put us in touch with ourselves, withone another, and with nature.45Brian Swimme, physicist, and Thomas Berry, theologian, collaboratedin writing The Universe Story. They recommend setting the Bible asideand taking nature as our primary scripture. They advocate a newspirituality of the earth inspired by the story of the cosmos revealed byscience, from the primeval fireball to human culture. The scientificnarrative is presented not primarily to provide an intellectual argumentfor the existence of God but to awaken our reverence and sense of192
community with all living things. They hold that a biocentric andecological outlook in science can be reinforced by the respect for theearth found among religious mystics and indigenous cultures. They callfor a universal science-based myth or cosmic story in place of theconflicting stories of particular traditions, so that the global communitycan unite to preserve a planet facing environmental destruction.46Many feminist authors are responsive to the sacred in nature, andsome call themselves ecofeminists. In chapter 6 I will explore the closeconnections between the devaluation of women and the devaluation ofnature in Western history. I will distinguish two groups: reformistfeminists, such as Sallie McFague and Rosemary Ruether, who believethat the patriarchal assumptions of the historic Christian tradition can berejected without rejecting the whole tradition; and radical feminists,such as Starhawk and Charlene Spretnak, who turn to Goddess and EarthMother figures from early or tribal cultures as inspiration for femininesymbols of the divine and alternative rituals for today. These ritualsoften express the immance of the divine in nature and the participation ofhumanity in the natural world.47 It will be clear at several points in thisvolume that I am greatly indebted to feminists insights, though I am moreinterested in reforming the Christian tradition than in pursuing moreradical alternatives.A strong feature of all these versions of nature-centered spiritualityis the support they give to environmental ethics. But I will suggestbelow that despite its past inadequacies, the Christian community canreclaim from biblical sources some significant environmental themes thathave been neglected in much of its history. I will maintain also that ourtheology should incorporate both divine immanence in nature andtranscendence of nature. Many of the authors mentioned above expressa deep commitment to social justice—in the treatment of women, the193
poor and oppressed, and indigenous populations, for example. Here therecord of Christianity is very mixed. The prophetic concern for justicetoward the poor and oppressed has always been present in the Christiancommunity, but the institutional church has often collaborated withunjust structures of political and economic power.Personal responses to the sacred in nature are indeed more universaland less divisive than particular theological doctrines in an age ofreligious pluralism. They encourage humility and openness, avoiding thedogmatism that has often been present in historical religious traditions.But I will suggest in chapter 6 that we should reject both absolutism,which claims exclusive truth for one religious tradition, and relativism,which holds that no judgments can be made about the truth of anytradition. I will defend the path of dialogue between traditions. If weaccept a genuine religious pluralism, we can respect the distinctivecharacter of the historic traditions and learn from one another as well asfrom nature.Another group of authors has described parallels between the holismof quantum physics and the unity of reality portrayed in Easternreligious traditions. David Bohm was a creative physicist who developeda distinctive mathematical formalism from which the equations ofquantum physics can be derived. He went on to postulate an “implicateorder” underlying the observable world. He acknowledged that hisholistic assumptions were influenced by his commitment to themeditative practices and monistic world view of the Indian mysticKrishnamurti.48 Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics is a popular account ofparallels between the experience of unity in Eastern religious traditionsand the unity of the world as described by quantum physics.49 Theparallels between physics and Eastern mysticism are discussed inchapter 7.194
There is also a wide range of what are sometimes called New Agemovements that combine interest in meditation, harmony with nature, andvarious purportedly scientific claims that are more esoteric. One commontheme, despite their great diversity, is interest in “higher consciousness,”“cosmic consciousness,” or the power of mind over matter. Another isadvocacy of a “holistic approach” designed to overcome all prevalentdualisms, such as those of matter and spirit, masculine and feminine, andhumanity and nature. The scientific claims of some of these groups aredismissed by most scientists as “pseudoscience,” for example astrology,communication with the dead through mediums, reports of visitors fromspace (UFOs), and the concentration of spiritual energies by crystals.50Other claims have been the subject of serious scientific research buthave been difficult to verify, such as paranormal experiences of mentaltelepathy and precognition. From a scientific viewpoint, there are twoproblems with these claims: (1) the data cited can seldom be reliablyreproduced, and (2) few theories have been proposed that can be testedagainst data.In this volume I will be looking mainly at mainstream science and itsrelation to mainstream religion. However, I am critical of the reductionistassumptions of many scientists, and I welcome the careful testing ofmore holistic hypotheses. I am sympathetic with the hunger forspirituality in a materialistic culture and the widespread dissatisfactionwith traditional institutions, whether scientific or religious. I, too, wish toencourage personal religious experience that is significant in people’slives. I am therefore open to an extension of what are taken to be theboundaries of acceptable science and religion and to the possibility ofnew paradigms that are more inclusive. In both science and religion Ibelieve that alternatives outside the mainstream should be carefullyevaluated and neither dismissed out of hand nor uncritically accepted.195
IV. INTEGRATIONThe final group of authors holds that some sort of integration ispossible between the content of theology and the content of science.Here the relationships between theological doctrines and particularscientific theories are more direct than in any of the forms of Dialogueabove. There are three distinct versions of Integration. In naturaltheology, it is claimed that the existence of God can be inferred from theevidences of design in nature, of which science has made us more aware.In a theology of nature, the main sources of theology lie outside science,but scientific theories may affect the reformulation of certain doctrines,particularly the doctrines of creation and human nature. In a systematicsynthesis, both science and religion contribute to the development of aninclusive metaphysics, such as that of process philosophy.196
1. NATURAL THEOLOGYPrevious chapters have traced the changing fortunes of naturaltheology in earlier centuries. Thomas Aquinas offered several versionsof the cosmological argument for a First Cause (or a necessary being onwhom all contingent beings are dependent). He also presented theteleological argument for the orderliness and intelligibility of nature ingeneral and the evidence of design in particular natural phenomena.Newton, Boyle, and other key figures in the rise of modern sciencefrequently extolled the evidences of benevolent design in nature. Humecriticized these arguments in the eighteenth century, but they were stillpopular in the early nineteenth century. Paley argued that thecoordination of many complex parts for a single function (such as visionin the case of the eye) testifies to an intelligent Designer. Darwin in turnshowed that adaptation can be explained by random variation andnatural selection, though he continued to hold (at least until late in hislife) that the evolutionary laws were themselves the product of intelligentdesign. In the reformulation of the argument after Darwin, design wassaid to be present not in the particular structures of individual organismsbut in the properties of matter and the laws of nature through which theevolutionary process could produce such organisms. It is in the designof the total process that God’s wisdom is evident. In the 1930s, F. R.Tennant argued that nature is a unified system of mutually supportingstructures that have led to living organisms and have provided theconditions for human moral, aesthetic, and intellectual life.51Reformulations of the teleological argument are common in RomanCatholic thought, where natural theology has traditionally held arespected place as a preparation for the truths of revealed theology.52The British philosopher Richard Swinburne has given an extended197
defense of natural theology. He starts by discussing confirmation theoryin the philosophy of science. In the development of science, newevidence does not make a theory certain. Instead, a theory has an initialplausibility, and the probability that it is true increases or decreases withthe additional evidence (Bayes’s Theorem). Swinburne suggests that theexistence of God has an initial plausibility because of its simplicity andbecause it gives a personal explanation of the world in terms of theintentions of an agent. He then argues that the evidence of order in theworld increases the probability of the theistic hypothesis. He alsomaintains that science cannot account for the presence of consciousbeings in the world. “Something outside the web of physical laws” isneeded to explain the rise of consciousness. Finally, religious experienceprovides “additional crucial evidence.” Swinburne concludes, “On ourtotal evidence, theism is more probable than not.”53The most recent rendition of the design argument is the AnthropicPrinciple in cosmology. Astrophysicists have found that life in theuniverse would have been impossible if some of the physical constantsand other conditions in the early universe had differed even slightly fromthe values they had. The universe seems to be “fine-tuned” for thepossibility of life. For example, Stephen Hawking writes, “If the rate ofexpansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even onepart in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would haverecollapsed before it even reached its present size.”54 Freeman Dysondraws the following conclusion from such findings:I conclude from the existence of these accidents of physics and astronomy that the universe isan unexpectedly hospitable place for living creatures to make their home in. Being a scientist,trained in the habits of thought and language of the twentieth century rather than the eighteenth. Ido not claim that the architecture of the universe proves the existence of God. I claim only thatthe architecture of the universe is consistent with the hypothesis that mind plays an essential rolein its functioning.55198
John Barrow and Frank Tipler present many other cases in whichthere were extremely critical values of various forces in the earlyuniverse.56 The philosopher John Leslie defends the Anthropic Principleas a design argument. But he points out that an alternative explanationwould be the assumption of many worlds (either in successive cycles ofan oscillating universe or in separate domains existing simultaneously).These worlds might differ from each other, and we just happen to be inone that has the right variables for the emergence of life.57 Moreover,some of these apparently arbitrary conditions may be necessitated by amore basic unified theory, on which physicists are currently working. Wewill examine these alternatives in chapter 8.The former bishop of Birmingham, Hugh Montefiore, claims thatthere are many instances of design in the universe, including theAnthropic Principle and the directionality of evolution. Some of his otherexamples, such as James Lovelock’s “Gaia Hypothesis” and RupertSheldrake’s “morphogenetic fields,” are much more controversial andhave little support in the scientific community. Montefiore does not claimthat these arguments prove the existence of God, but only that the latteris more probable than other explanations.58Debates continue about the validity of each of these arguments, towhich we will return in later chapters. Natural theology has a great appealin a world of religious pluralism, since it starts from scientific data onwhich we might expect agreement despite cultural and religiousdifferences. Moreover, such arguments may overcome some obstacles tobelief by showing that the idea of a Designer is as reasonable asalternative interpretive proposals. But even if the arguments areaccepted, they would not lead to the personal, active God of the Bible, asHume pointed out, but only to an intelligent designer remote from the199
world. Moreover, few persons have actually acquired their religiousbeliefs by such arguments. Natural theology can show that the existenceof God is a plausible hypothesis, but this kind of reasoning seems farremoved from the actual life of a religious community.200
2. THEOLOGY OF NATUREA theology of nature does not start from science, as some versionsof natural theology do. Instead, it starts from a religious tradition basedon religious experience and historical revelation. But it holds that sometraditional doctrines need to be reformulated in the light of currentscience. Here science and religion are considered to be relativelyindependent sources of ideas, but with some areas of overlap in theirconcerns. In particular, the doctrines of creation, providence, and humannature are affected by the findings of science. If religious beliefs are tobe in harmony with scientific knowledge, some adjustments ormodifications are called for. The theologian will want to draw mainly frombroad features of science that are widely accepted, rather than riskadapting to limited or speculative theories that are more likely to beabandoned in the future. Theological doctrines must be consistent withthe scientific evidence even if they are not required by it.Our understanding of the general characteristics of nature will affectour models of God’s relation to nature. Nature is today understood to bea dynamic evolutionary process with a long history of emergent novelty,characterized throughout by chance and law. The natural order isecological, interdependent, and multileveled. These characteristics willmodify our representation of the relation of both God and humanity tononhuman nature. This will, in turn, affect our attitudes toward natureand will have practical implications for environmental ethics. Theproblem of evil will also be viewed differently in an evolutionary ratherthan a static world.For biochemist and theologian Arthur Peacocke, the starting point oftheological reflection is past and present religious experience in anongoing religious community. Religious beliefs are tested by community201
consensus and by criteria of coherence, comprehensiveness, andfruitfulness. But Peacocke is willing to reformulate traditional beliefs inresponse to current science. He discusses at length how chance and lawwork together in cosmology, quantum physics, nonequilibriumthermodynamics, and biological evolution. He describes the emergenceof distinctive forms of activity at higher levels of complexity in themultilayered hierarchy of organic life and mind. He gives chance apositive role in the exploration and expression of potentialities at alllevels. God creates through the whole process of law and chance, not byintervening in gaps in the process. God creates “in and through” theprocesses of the natural world that science unveils. Peacocke speaks ofchance as God’s radar sweeping through the range of possibilities andevoking the diverse potentialities of natural systems. In other images,artistic creativity is used as an analogy in which purposefulness andopen-endedness are continuously present.59 I am sympathetic withPeacocke’s position at most points. He gives us vivid images for talkingabout God’s relation to a natural order whose characteristics science hasdisclosed. But I believe that in addition to images that provide asuggestive link between scientific and religious reflection, we needphilosophical categories to help us unify scientific and theologicalassertions in a more systematic way.The writings of the Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin areanother example of a theology of nature. Some reviewers take ThePhenomenon of Man to be a form of natural theology, an argument fromevolution to the existence of God. I have suggested that it can moreappropriately be viewed as a synthesis of scientific ideas with religiousideas derived from Christian tradition and experience. Teilhard’s otherwritings make clear how deeply he was molded by his religious heritageand his own spirituality. But his concept of God was modified by202
evolutionary ideas, even if it was not derived from an analysis ofevolution. Teilhard speaks of continuing creation and a God immanent inan incomplete world. His vision of the final convergence to an “OmegaPoint” is both a speculative extrapolation of evolutionary directionalityand a distinctive interpretation of Christian eschatology.60In any theology of nature there are theological issues that requireclarification. Is some reformulation of the classical idea of God’somnipotence called for? Theologians have wrestled for centuries withthe problem of reconciling omnipotence and omniscience with humanfreedom and the existence of evil and suffering. But a new problem israised by the role of chance in diverse fields of science. Do we defendthe traditional idea of divine sovereignty and hold that what appears tothe scientist to be chance is really providentially controlled by God? Ordo both human freedom and chance in nature represent a self-limitationon God’s foreknowledge and power, required by the creation of this sortof world?How do we represent God’s action in the world? The traditionaldistinction of primary and secondary causes preserves the integrity ofthe secondary causal chains that science studies. God does not interferebut acts through secondary causes, which at their own level provide acomplete explanation of all events. This tends toward deism if God hasplanned all things from the beginning so they would unfold by their ownstructures (deterministic and probabilistic) to achieve the goals intended.Is the biblical picture of the particularity of divine action then replacedby the uniformity of divine concurrence with natural causes? Should wethen speak only of God’s one action, the whole of cosmic history? Theseare some of the questions that a theology of nature must answer. We willreturn to them in part 4.A theology of nature today must also provide motivation for action203
to preserve the environment of our endangered planet. Environmentalistshave rightly criticized classical Christianity for emphasizing divinetranscendence at the expense of immanence and for drawing too sharp aline between human and nonhuman nature. The idea of dominion overnature in Genesis 1:28 has sometimes been used to justify unlimiteddomination in which other creatures are treated simply as means tohuman ends. But many recent authors have urged the recovery ofbiblical themes that give strong support to environmentalism.611. Stewardship of Nature. The land belongs ultimately to the Godwho created it; we are only trustees or stewards, responsible for itswelfare and accountable for our treatment of it. The Sabbath is a day ofrest for the earth and other living things as well as for people. Everyseventh year the fields are to lie fallow; the land deserves respect, and itwill cry out if mistreated. However, stewardship has often beeninterpreted as assigning only utilitarian value to nature, and it can easilybe distorted into domination over nature unless other themes arecombined with it.2. Celebration of Nature. Celebration goes beyond stewardshipbecause it implies that nature is valuable in itself. The first chapter ofGenesis ends with an affirmation of the goodness of the created order;the idea of creation is a great unifying framework encompassing all formsof life. The covenant after the flood includes all creatures. Many of thepsalms refer to the value of nature apart from its usefulness to us, andthey celebrate the rich diversity in the natural world. At the end of hisdialogue with God, Job is overwhelmed by the majesty of naturalphenomena, including strange creatures that are of no use to humanity.Christ spoke of God’s care for the lilies of the field and the sparrows ofthe air, and several of his parables use images from the natural world.3. A Sacramental View of Nature. Even greater value is attributed to204
nature when it is believed that the sacred is present in and under it.Eastern Orthodoxy and Celtic Christianity celebrate the goodness ofcreation and find God’s presence in it. Some Anglican authors hold thatall of nature and not just the bread, wine, and water of the sacramentscan be vehicles of God’s grace. These traditions envision the redemptionof the whole creation rather than the rescue of human souls from theworld. They have much in common with the nature-centered spiritualitydiscussed earlier, but place more emphasis on transcendence and theperson of Christ.4. The Holy spirit in Nature. In the opening verses of Genesis, “theSpirit of God was moving over the face of the water.” Several of thepsalms speak of the presence of the Spirit in nature. After praising Godfor diverse plants and animals around us today, Psalm lO4 affirms:“When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created.” But the Spiritalso inspires the prophets and the worshiping community. Christreceived the Spirit at his baptism, and the activity of the Spirit marked thebirth of the church at Pentecost. Reference to the Spirit thus ties togetherGod’s work as Creator and Redeemer. The same God whom we encounterin nature can be encountered in the life of Christ and the church.I have discussed environmental ethics at greater length elsewhere,62but the topic is taken up at many point in this volume (see Index ofSelected Topics). I seek a theology that can bring together concern forthe environment and for social justice. I will maintain in chapter 11 thatprocess theology offers a promising conceptuality for articulatingenvironmental and human values.205
3. SYSTEMATIC SYNTHESISA more systematic integration can occur if both science and religioncontribute to a coherent world view elaborated in a comprehensivemetaphysics. Metaphysics is the search for a set of general categories interms of which diverse types of experience can be interpreted. Aninclusive conceptual scheme is sought that can represent thefundamental characteristics of all events. Metaphysics as such is theprovince of the philosopher rather than of either the scientist or thetheologian, but it can serve as an arena of common reflection. TheThomistic framework provided such a metaphysics, but one in which, Iwould argue, the dualisms of spirit/ matter, mind/ body, humanity/ nature,and eternity/ time were only partially overcome.Process philosophy, is a promising candidate for a mediating roletoday because it was itself formulated under the influence of bothscientific and religious thought, even as it responded to persistentproblems in the history of Western philosophy (for example, the mind/body problem). Alfred North Whitehead has been the most influentialexponent of process categories, though theological implications havebeen more fully investigated by Charles Hartshorne, John Cobb, andothers. The influence of biology and physics is evident in the processview of reality as a dynamic web of interconnected events. Nature ischaracterized by change, chance, and novelty as well as order. It isincomplete and still coming into being. Process thinkers are critical ofreductionism; they defend organismic categories applicable to activitiesat higher levels of organization. They see continuity as well asdistinctiveness among levels of reality; the characteristics of each levelhave rudimentary forerunners at earlier and lower levels. Against adualism of matter and mind, or a materialism that has no place for mind,206
process thought envisages two aspects of all events as seen from withinand from without. Because humanity is continuous with the rest ofnature (despite the uniqueness of reflective self-consciousness), humanexperience can be taken as a clue to interpreting the experience of otherbeings. Genuinely new phenomena emerge in evolutionary history, butthe basic metaphysical categories apply to all events.Process thinkers understand God to be the source of novelty andorder. Creation is a long and incomplete process. God elicits the self-creation of individual entities, thereby allowing for freedom and noveltyas well as order and structure. God is not the unrelated Absolute, theUnmoved Mover, but instead interacts reciprocally with the world, aninfluence on all events though never the sole cause of any event.Process metaphysics understands every new event to be jointly theproduct of the entity’s past, its own action, and the action of God. HereGod transcends the world but is immanent in the world in a specific wayin the structure of each event. We do not have a succession of purelynatural events, interrupted by gaps in which God alone operates. Processthinkers reject the idea of divine omnipotence; they believe in a God ofpersuasion rather than compulsion, and they have provided distinctiveanalyses of the place of chance, human freedom, evil, and suffering inthe world. Christian process theologians point out that the power oflove, as exemplified in the cross, is precisely its ability to evoke aresponse while respecting the integrity of other beings. They also holdthat divine immutability is not a characteristic of the biblical God who isintimately involved with history. Hartshorne elaborates a “dipolar”concept of God: unchanging in purpose and character, but changing inexperience and relationship.63In The Liberation of Life, Charles Birch and John Cobb have broughttogether ideas from biology, process philosophy, and Christian thought.207
Early chapters develop an ecological or organismic model in which (1)every being is constituted by its interaction with a wider environment,and (2) all beings are subjects of experience, which runs the gamut fromrudimentary responsiveness to reflective consciousness. Evolutionaryhistory shows continuity but also the emergence of novelty. Humanity iscontinuous with and part of the natural order. Birch and Cobb develop anethics that avoids anthropocentrism. The goal of enhancing the richnessof experience in any form encourages concern for nonhuman life, withouttreating all forms of life as equally valuable. These authors present apowerful vision of a just and sustainable society in an interdependentcommunity of life.64 In other books they indicate their commitment to theChristian tradition and their attempt to reformulate it in the categories ofprocess thought. Writing with David Griffin, for example, Cobb seeks “atruly contemporary vision that is at the same time truly Christian.”65 Godis understood both as “a source of novelty and order” and as “creative-responsive love.” Christ’s vision of the love of God opens us to creativetransformation. These authors also show that Christian process theologycan provide a sound basis for an environmental ethics.I am in basic agreement with the “Theology of Nature” position,coupled with a cautious use of process philosophy. Too much relianceon science in natural theology can lead to the neglect of the areas ofexperience that I consider most important religiously. As I see it, thecenter of the Christian life is an experience of reorientation, the healing ofour brokenness in new wholeness, and the expression of a newrelationship to God and to the neighbor. Existentialists and linguisticanalysts rightly point to the primacy of personal and social life inreligion, and neo-orthodoxy rightly says that for the Christian communityit is in response to the person of Christ that our lives can be changed.But the centrality of redemption need not lead us to belittle creation, for208
our personal and social lives are intimately bound to the rest of thecreated order. We are redeemed in and with the world, not from the world.Part of our task, then, is to articulate a theology of nature, for which wewill have to draw from both religious and scientific sources.In articulating a theology of nature, a systematic metaphysics canhelp us toward a coherent vision. But Christianity should never beequated with any metaphysical system. There are dangers if eitherscientific or religious ideas are distorted to fit a preconceived synthesisthat claims to encompass all reality. We must always keep in mind therich diversity of our experience. We distort it if we cut it up into separaterealms or watertight compartments, but we also distort it if we force itinto a neat intellectual system. A coherent vision of reality can still allowfor the distinctiveness of differing types of experience. In the chaptersthat follow I will try to do justice to what is valid in the Independenceposition, though I will be mainly developing the Dialogue positionconcerning methodology and the Integration thesis with respect to thedoctrines of creation and human nature.209
Nonoverlapping Magisteriaby Stephen Jay Gouldncongruous places often inspire anomalous stories. In early 1984, I spent several nights at the Vatican housed in a hotel built for itinerant priests. While pondering over such puzzling issues as the intended function of the bidets in each bathroom, and hungering for something other than plum jam on my breakfast rolls (why did the basket only contain hundreds of identical plum packets and not a one of, say, strawberry?), I encountered yet another among the innumerable issues of contrasting cultures that can make life so interesting. Our crowd (present in Rome for a meeting on nuclear winter sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences) shared the hotel with a group of French and Italian Jesuit priests who were also professional scientists.At lunch, the priests called me over to their table to pose a problem that had been troubling them. What, they wanted to know, was going on in America with all this talk about “scientific creationism”? One asked me: “Is evolution really in some kind of trouble. and if so, what could such trouble be? I have always been taught that no doctrinal conflict exists between evolution and Catholic faith, and the evidence for evolution seems both entirely satisfactory and utterly overwhelming. Have I missed something?”A lively pastiche of French, Italian, and English conversation then ensued for half an hour or so, but the priests all seemed reassured by my general answer: Evolution has encountered no intellectual trouble; no new arguments have been offered. Creationism is a homegrown phenomenon of American sociocultural history—a splinter movement (unfortunately rather more of a beam these days) of Protestant fundamentalists who believe that every word of the Bible must be literally true, whatever such a claim might mean. We all left satisfied, but I certainly felt bemused by the anomaly of my role as a Jewish agnostic, trying to reassure a group of Catholic priests that evolution remained both true and entirely consistent with religious belief.Another story in the same mold: I am often asked whether I ever encounter creationism as a live issue among my Harvard undergraduate students. I reply that only once, in nearly thirty years of teaching, did I experience such an incident. A very sincere and serious freshman student came to my office hours with the following question that had clearly been troubling him deeply: “I am a devout Christian and have never had any reason to doubt evolution, an idea that seems both exciting and particularly well documented. But my roommate, a proselytizing Evangelical, has been insisting with enormous vigor that I cannot be both a real Christian and an evolutionist. So tell me, can a person believe both in God and evolution?” Again, I gulped hard, did my intellectual duty, and reassured him that evolution was both true and entirely compatible with Christian belief—a position I hold sincerely, but still an odd situation for a Jewish agnostic.These two stories illustrate a cardinal point, frequently unrecognized but absolutely central to any understanding of the status and impact of the politically potent, fundamentalist doctrine known by its self-proclaimed oxymoron as “scientitic creationism”—the claim that the Bible is literally true, that all organisms were created during six days of twenty-four hours, that the earth is only a few thousand years old, and that evolution must therefore be false. Creationism does not pit science against religion (as my opening stories indicate), for no such conflict exists. Creationism does not raise any unsettled intellectual issues about the nature of biology or the history of life. Creationism is a local and parochial movement,Stephen Jay Gould, “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” Natural History 106 (March 1997): 16- 22
powerful only in the United States among Western nations, and prevalent only among the few sectors of American Protestantism that choose to read the Bible as an inerrant document, literally true in every jot and tittle.I do not doubt that one could find an occasional nun who would prefer to teach creationism in her parochial school biology class or an occasional orthodox rabbi who does the same in his yeshiva, but creationism based on biblical literalism makes little sense in either Catholicism or Judaism for neither religion maintains any extensive tradition for reading the Bible as literal truth rather than illuminating literature, based partly on metaphor and allegory (essential components of all good writing) and demanding interpretation for proper understanding. Most Protestant groups, of course, take the same position—the fundamentalist fringe notwithstanding.The position that I have just outlined by personal stories and general statements represents the standard attitude of all major Western religions (and of Western science) today. (I cannot, through ignorance, speak of Eastern religions, although I suspect that the same position would prevail in most cases.) The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise—science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives. The attainment of wisdom in a full life requires extensive attention to both domains—for a great book tells us that the truth can make us free and that we will live in optimal harmony with our fellows when we learn to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.In the context of this standard position, I was enormously puzzled by a statement issued by Pope John Paul II on October 22, 1996, to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the same body that had sponsored my earlier trip to the Vatican. In this document, entitled “Truth Cannot Contradict Truth,” the pope defended both the evidence for evolution and the consistency of the theory with Catholic religious doctrine. Newspapers throughout the world responded with frontpage headlines, as in the New York Times for October 25:”Pope Bolsters Church’s Support for Scientific View of Evolution.”Now I know about “slow news days” and I do admit that nothing else was strongly competing for headlines at that particular moment. (The Times could muster nothing more exciting for a lead story than Ross Perot’s refusal to take Bob Dole’s advice and quit the presidential race.) Still, I couldn’t help feeling immensely puzzled by all the attention paid to the pope’s statement (while being wryly pleased, of course, for we need all the good press we can get, especially from respected outside sources). The Catholic Church had never opposed evolution and had no reason to do so. Why had the pope issued such a statement at all? And why had the press responded with an orgy of worldwide, front-page coverage?I could only conclude at first, and wrongly as I soon learned, that journalists throughout the world must deeply misunderstand the relationship between science and religion, and must therefore be elevating a minor papal comment to unwarranted notice. Perhaps most people really do think that a war exists between science and religion, and that (to cite a particularly newsworthy case) evolution must be intrinsically opposed to Christianity. In such a context, a papal admission of evolution’s legitimate status might be regarded as major news indeed—a sort of modern equivalent for a story that never happened, but would have made the biggest journalistic splash of 1640: Pope Urban VIII releases his most famous prisoner from house arrest and humbly apologizes, “Sorry, Signor Galileo… the sun, er, is central.”But I then discovered that the prominent coverage of papal satisfaction with evolution had not been an error of non-Catholic Anglophone journalists. The Vatican itself had issued the statement as a major news release. And Italian newspapers had featured, if anything, even bigger headlines and longer stories. The conservative Il Giornale, for example, shouted from its masthead: “Pope Says We May Descend from Monkeys.”Clearly, I was out to lunch. Something novel or surprising must lurk within the papal statement but what could it be?—especially given the accuracy of my primary impression (as I later verified) that the Catholic Church values scientific study, views science as no threat to religion in general or Catholic doctrine in particular, and has long accepted both
Stephen Jay Gould, “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” 1997 the legitimacy of evolution as a field of study and the potential harmony of evolutionary conclusions with Catholic faith.As a former constituent of Tip O’Neill’s, I certainly know that “all politics is local”—and that the Vatican undoubtedly has its own internal reasons, quite opaque to me, for announcing papal support of evolution in a major statement. Still, I knew that I was missing some important key, and I felt frustrated. I then remembered the primary rule of intellectual life: when puzzled, it never hurts to read the primary documents—a rather simple and self-evident principle that has, nonetheless, completely disappeared from large sectors of the American experience.I knew that Pope Pius XII (not one of my favorite figures in twentieth-century history, to say the least) had made the primary statement in a 1950 encyclical entitled Humani Generis. I knew the main thrust of his message: Catholics could believe whatever science determined about the evolution of the human body, so long as they accepted that, at some time of his choosing, God had infused the soul into such a creature. I also knew that I had no problem with this statement, for whatever my private beliefs about souls, science cannot touch such a subject and therefore cannot be threatened by any theological position on such a legitimately and intrinsically religious issue. Pope Pius XII, in other words, had properly acknowledged and respected the separate domains of science and theology. Thus, I found myself in total agreement with Humani Generis—but I had never read the document in full (not much of an impediment to stating an opinion these days).I quickly got the relevant writings from, of all places, the Internet. (The pope is prominently on-line, but a Luddite like me is not. So I got a computer-literate associate to dredge up the documents. I do love the fracture of stereotypes implied by finding religion so hep and a scientist so square.) Having now read in full both Pope Pius’s Humani Generis of 1950 and Pope John Paul’s proclamation of October 1996, I finally understand why the recent statement seems so new, revealing, and worthy of all those headlines. And the message could not be more welcome for evolutionists and friends of both science and religion.The text of Humani Generis focuses on the magisterium (or teaching authority) of the Church—a word derived not from any concept of majesty or awe but from the different notion of teaching, for magister is Latin for “teacher.” We may, I think, adopt this word and concept to express the central point of this essay and the principled resolution of supposed “conflict” or “warfare” between science and religion. No such conflict should exist because each subject has a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority—and these magisteria do not overlap (the principle that I would like to designate as NOMA, or “nonoverlapping magisteria”).The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for starters, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty). To cite the arch cliches, we get the age of rocks, and religion retains the rock of ages; we study how the heavens go, and they determine how to go to heaven.This resolution might remain all neat and clean if the nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA) of science and religion were separated by an extensive no man’s land. But, in fact, the two magisteria bump right up against each other, interdigitating in wondrously complex ways along their joint border. Many of our deepest questions call upon aspects of both for different parts of a full answer—and the sorting of legitimate domains can become quite complex and difficult. To cite just two broad questions involving both evolutionary facts and moral arguments: Since evolution made us the only earthly creatures with advanced consciousness, what responsibilities are so entailed for our relations with other species? What do our genealogical ties with other organisms imply about the meaning of human life?Pius XII’s Humani Generis is a highly traditionalist document by a deeply conservative man forced to face all the “isms” and cynicisms that rode the wake of World War II and informed the struggle to rebuild human decency from the ashes of the Holocaust. The encyclical, subtitled “Concerning some false opinions which threaten to undermine the foundations of
Catholic doctrine” begins with a statement of embattlement:Disagreement and error among men on moral and religious matters have always been a cause of profound sorrow to all good men, but above all to the true and loyal sons of the Church, especially today, when we see the principles of Christian culture being attacked on all sides.Pius lashes out, in turn, at various external enemies of the Church: pantheism, existentialism, dialectical materialism, historicism. and of course and preeminently, communism. He then notes with sadness that some well-meaning folks within the Church have fallen into a dangerous relativism—”a theological pacifism and egalitarianism, in which all points of view become equally valid”—in order to include people of wavering faith who yearn for the embrace of Christian religion but do not wish to accept the particularly Catholic magisterium.What is this world coming to when these noxious novelties can so discombobulate a revealed and established order? Speaking as a conservative’s conservative, Pius laments:Novelties of this kind have already borne their deadly fruit in almost all branches of theology.…Some question whether angels are personal beings, and whether matter and spirit differ essentially.…Some even say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation, based on an antiquated philosophic notion of substance, should be so modified that the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist be reduced to a kind of symbolism.Pius first mentions evolution to decry a misuse by overextension often promulgated by zealous supporters of the anathematized “isms”:Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution…explains the origin of all things.…Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical materialism.Pius’s major statement on evolution occurs near the end of the encyclical in paragraphs 35 through 37. He accepts the standard model of NOMA and begins by acknowledging that evolution lies in a difficult area where the domains press hard against each other. “It remains for US now to speak about those questions which. although they pertain to the positive sciences, are nevertheless more or less connected with the truths of the Christian faith.” [Interestingly, the main thrust of these paragraphs does not address evolution in general but lies in refuting a doctrine that Pius calls “polygenism,” or the notion of human ancestry from multiple parents—for he regards such an idea as incompatible with the doctrine of original sin, “which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.” In this one instance, Pius may be transgressing the NOMA principle—but I cannot judge, for I do not understand the details of Catholic theology and therefore do not know how symbolically such a statement may be read. If Pius is arguing that we cannot entertain a theory about derivation of all modern humans from an ancestral population rather than through an ancestral individual (a potential fact) because such an idea would question the doctrine of original sin (a theological construct), then I would declare him out of line for letting the magisterium of religion dictate a conclusion within the magisterium of science.]Pius then writes the well-known words that permit Catholics to entertain the evolution of the human body (a factual issue under the magisterium of science), so long as they accept the divine Creation and infusion of the soul (a theological notion under the magisterium of religion):The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.
I had, up to here, found nothing surprising in Humani Generis, and nothing to relieve my puzzlement about the novelty of Pope John Paul’s recent statement. But I read further and realized that Pope Pius had said more about evolution, something I had never seen quoted, and that made John Paul’s statement most interesting indeed. In short, Pius forcefully proclaimed that while evolution may be legitimate in principle, the theory, in fact, had not been proven and might well be entirely wrong. One gets the strong impression, moreover, that Pius was rooting pretty hard for a verdict of falsity. Continuing directly from the last quotation, Pius advises us about the proper study of evolution:However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure.… Some, however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.To summarize, Pius generally accepts the NOMA principle of nonoverlapping magisteria in permitting Catholics to entertain the hypothesis of evolution for the human body so long as they accept the divine infusion of the soul. But he then offers some (holy) fatherly advice to scientists about the status of evolution as a scientific concept: the idea is not yet proven, and you all need to be especially cautious because evolution raises many troubling issues right on the border of my magisterium. One may read this second theme in two different ways: either as a gratuitous incursion into a different magisterium or as a helpful perspective from an intelligent and concerned outsider. As a man of good will, and in the interest of conciliation, I am happy to embrace the latter reading.In any case, this rarely quoted second claim (that evolution remains both unproven and a bit dangerous)—and not the familiar first argument for the NOMA principle (that Catholics may accept the evolution of the body so long as they embrace the creation of the soul)—defines the novelty and the interest of John Paul’s recent statement.John Paul begins by summarizing Pius’s older encyclical of 195O, and particularly by reaffirming the NOMA principle—nothing new here, and no cause for extended publicity:In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII had already stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation.To emphasize the power of NOMA, John Paul poses a potential problem and a sound resolution: How can we reconcile science’s claim for physical continuity in human evolution with Catholicism’s insistence that the soul must enter at a moment of divine infusion:With man, then, we find ourselves in the presence of an ontological difference, an ontological leap, one could say However, does not the posing of such ontological discontinuity run counter to that physical continuity which seems to be the main thread of research into evolution in the field of physics and chemistry? Consideration of the method used in the various branches of knowledge makes it possible to reconcile two points of view which would seem irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure the multiple manifestations of life with increasing precision and correlate them with the time line. The moment of transition to the spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation.The novelty and news value of John Paul’s statement lies, rather, in his profound revision of Pius’s second and rarely quoted claim that evolution, while conceivable in principle and reconcilable with religion, can cite little persuasive evidence, and may well be false. John Paul—states and I can only say amen, and thanks for noticing—that the half century between Pius’s surveying the ruins of World War II and his own pontificate heralding the dawn of a new millennium has witnessed such a growth of data, and such a refinement of
theory, that evolution can no longer be doubted by people of good will:Pius XII added . . . that this opinion [evolution] should not be adopted as though it were a certain, proven doctrine. . . . Today, almost half a century after the publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of more than one hypothesis in the theory of evolution. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.In conclusion. Pius had grudgingly admitted evolution as a legitimate hypothesis that he regarded as only tentatively supported and potentially (as I suspect he hoped) untrue. John Paul, nearly fifty years later, reaffirms the legitimacy of evolution under the NOMA principle—no news here—but then adds that additional data and theory have placed the factuality of evolution beyond reasonable doubt. Sincere Christians must now accept evolution not merely as a plausible possibility but also as an effectively proven fact. In other words, official Catholic opinion on evolution has moved from “say it ain’t so, but we can deal with it if we have to” (Pius’s grudging view of 1950) to John Paul’s entirely welcoming “it has been proven true; we always celebrate nature’s factuality, and we look forward to interesting discussions of theological implications.” I happily endorse this turn of events as gospel—literally “good news.” I may represent the magisterium of science, but I welcome the support of a primary leader from the other major magisterium of our complex lives. And I recall the wisdom of King Solomon: “As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country (Prov. 25:25).Just as religion must bear the cross of its hard-liners. I have some scientific colleagues, including a few prominent enough to wield influence by their writings, who view this rapprochement of the separate magisteria with dismay. To colleagues like me—agnostic scientists who welcome and celebrate thc rapprochement, especially the pope’s latest statement—they say: “C’mon, be honest; you know that religion is addle-pated, superstitious, old-fashioned b.s.; you’re only making those welcoming noises because religion is so powerful, and we need to be diplomatic in order to assure public support and funding for science.” I do not think that this attitude is common among scientists, but such a position fills me with dismay—and I therefore end this essay with a personal statement about religion, as a testimony to what I regard as a virtual consensus among thoughtful scientists (who support the NOMA principle as firmly as the pope does).I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have enormous respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me, beyond almost all others (with a few exceptions, like evolution, paleontology, and baseball). Much of this fascination lies in the historical paradox that throughout Western history organized religion has fostered both the most unspeakable horrors and the most heart-rending examples of human goodness in the face of personal danger. (The evil, I believe, lies in the occasional confluence of religion with secular power. The Catholic Church has sponsored its share of horrors, from Inquisitions to liquidations—but only because this institution held such secular power during so much of Western history. When my folks held similar power more briefly in Old Testament times, they committed just as many atrocities with many of the same rationales.)I believe, with all my heart, in a respectful, even loving concordat between our magisteria—the NOMA solution. NOMA represents a principled position on moral and intellectua] grounds, not a mere diplomatic stance. NOMA also cuts both ways. If religion can no longer dictate the nature of factual conclusions properly under the magisterium of science, then scientists cannot claim higher insight into moral truth from any superior knowledge of the world’s empirical constitution. This mutual humility has important practical consequences in a world of such diverse passions.Religion is too important to too many people for any dismissal or denigration of the comfort still sought by many folks from theology. I may, for example, privately suspect that papal insistence on divine infusion of the soul represents a sop to our fears, a device for
maintaining a belief in human superiority within an evolutionary world offering no privileged position to any creature. But I also know that souls represent a subject outside the magisterium of science. My world cannot prove or disprove such a notion, and the concept of souls cannot threaten or impact my domain. Moreover, while I cannot personally accept the Catholic view of souls, I surely honor the metaphorical value of such a concept both for grounding moral discussion and for expressing what we most value about human potentiality: our decency, care, and all the ethical and intellectual struggles that the evolution of consciousness imposed upon us.As a moral position (and therefore not as a deduction from my knowledge of nature’s factuality), I prefer the “cold bath” theory that nature can be truly “cruel” and “indifferent”—in the utterly inappropriate terms of our ethical discourse—because nature was not constructed as our eventual abode, didn’t know we were coming (we are, after all, interlopers of the latest geological microsecond), and doesn’t give a damn about us (speaking metaphorically). I regard such a position as liberating, not depressing, because we then become free to conduct moral discourse—and nothing could be more important—in our own terms, spared from the delusion that we might read moral truth passively from nature’s factuality.But I recognize that such a position frightens many people, and that a more spiritual view of nature retains broad appeal (acknowledging the factuality of evolution and other phenomena, but still seeking some intrinsic meaning in human terms, and from the magisterium of religion). I do appreciate, for example, the struggles of a man who wrote to the New York Times on November 3, 1996, to state both his pain and his endorsement ofJohn Paul’s statement:Pope John Paul II’s acceptance of evolution touches the doubt in my heart. The problem of pain and suffering in a world created by a God who is all love and light is hard enough to bear, even if one is a creationist. But at least a creationist can say that the original creation, coming from the hand of God was good, harmonious, innocent and gentle. What can one say about evolution, even a spiritual theory of evolution? Pain and suffering, mindless cruelty and terror are its means of creation. Evolution’s engine is the grinding of predatory teeth upon the screaming, living flesh and bones of prey.… If evolution be true, my faith has rougher seas to sail.I don’t agree with this man, but we could have a wonderful argument. I would push the “cold bath” theory: he would (presumably) advocate the theme of inherent spiritual meaning in nature, however opaque the signal. But we would both be enlightened and filled with better understanding of these deep and ultimately unanswerable issues. Here, I believe, lies the greatest strength and necessity of NOMA, the nonoverlapping magisteria of science and religion. NOMA permits—indeed enjoins—the prospect of respectful discourse, of constant input from both magisteria toward the common goal of wisdom. If human beings are anything special, we are the creatures that must ponder and talk. Pope John Paul II would surely point out to me that his magisterium has always recognized this distinction, for “in principio, erat verbum”—”In the beginning was the Word.”
Collepals.com Plagiarism Free Papers
Are you looking for custom essay writing service or even dissertation writing services? Just request for our write my paper service, and we'll match you with the best essay writer in your subject! With an exceptional team of professional academic experts in a wide range of subjects, we can guarantee you an unrivaled quality of custom-written papers.
Get ZERO PLAGIARISM, HUMAN WRITTEN ESSAYS
Why Hire Collepals.com writers to do your paper?
Quality- We are experienced and have access to ample research materials.
We write plagiarism Free Content
Confidential- We never share or sell your personal information to third parties.
Support-Chat with us today! We are always waiting to answer all your questions.
