Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowships in Science & Religion

Science vs. Religion?

Given all that science has revealed about the world, do we still need religion in the 21^st century? That was the rather impolite (and very personal) question I grappled with during my weeks in Cambridge. To work through this question, I needed to understand why religious thinkers object to the materialism that pervades modern science. I wasn’t satisfied with the idea that God presides over the non-material world, while science deals with the physical world. In fact, I’ve found that many scholars who study science and religion—both believers and atheists—don’t care much for Stephen Jay Gould’s idea of “non-overlapping magisteria.” They’re looking for points of overlap or, for the atheists, areas of irreconcilable conflict. Here’s a round-up of good books that address this question of compatibility between science and religion.

Keith Ward, Pascal’s Fire: Scientific Faith and Religious Understanding (Oneworld, 2006) and God, Chance and Necessity (Oneworld, 1996). This Oxford theologian was one of my favorite speakers during the 2006 seminars. He has a nuanced understanding of God, one that includes Hindu perspectives as well as Christianity, and he makes one of the best arguments against the reductionism of modern science. I found his argument for the non-material dimension of consciousness, especially dreams, quite compelling.

Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press, 2006). Collins, the longtime head of the Human Genome Project, recounts his conversion from “obnoxious atheist” to evangelical Christian. It’s rare to hear such a prominent scientist speak openly about his belief in miracles like the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. His frequent references to God’s almighty power may turn off secular readers, but his support for stem cell research and his scathing critique of intelligent design will surprise people who assume evangelicals are anti-science. His attempts to bridge the gap between Bible-toting Christians and scientists could make Collins a pivotal player in the science/religion debate, though it’s unclear whether he’ll have much sway with fundamentalists.

The Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (Morgan Road Books, 2005). The Buddhist leader is fascinated by recent developments in science, especially neuroscience and quantum physics. This is an important book simply because of who the author is; I can’t think of another major religious leader who’s so fascinated by science. He writes, If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims. But some may question that claim once he starts talking about reincarnation. Still, I found this to be a good religious take on the limits of science: for instance, he accepts Darwinian evolution but also believes there’s more to the origin of life than what science has revealed so far.

Ken Wilber, The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion (Broadway, 1998). I know people who consider Wilber the most brilliant living philosopher, though others find his 4-quadrant theory overly schematic. His heady mix of Eastern spirituality and wide-ranging analytical thinking has given him an almost cult-like following. Wilber takes spiritual ideas seriously without getting mushy about God, and he links religious/intellectual history to stages of psychological development. Wilber has provocative ideas about consciousness, though few neuroscientists would accept his conclusions. This is one of his most accessible books, and less presumptuous than his Brief History of Everything and Theory of Everything.

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). Love him or hate him, Dawkins looms over the entire science and religion debate. He once called faith one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate. This book makes the case that the existence of God is itself a scientific question. For instance, if God intervenes in our physical world, how does He do it? You may disagree with Dawkins, but any critique of atheism must contend with his views. There may be only one idea that both Dawkins and fundamentalists agree on: Science and religion can’t be reconciled. For a critique of Dawkins, you might want to glance at Alister McGrath’s Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life (Blackwell Publishing, 2005). McGrath is a theologian at Oxford University with a Ph.D. in molecular biophysics. Time magazine also ran a good cover story (November 5, 2006) featuring a debate between Dawkins and Francis Collins.

Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason (W.W. Norton, 2004). America’s best-known atheist, Harris is the most vicious critic of religion I’ve ever read. He’s worth reading for several reasons: It’s a sobering experience to see so many passages in the Bible and the Koran that preach violence against your religious enemies (which Harris has collected with great glee). But Harris is also a neuroscientist who’s spent many years practicing Buddhist meditation. So he’s not your garden-variety atheist. Make sure you read the last chapter, Experiments in Consciousness, which offers a surprising defense of spirituality. Harris thinks the nature of consciousness is still a huge mystery, one that science may never explain. When I interviewed him, he astonished me by saying he’s had various telepathic experiences. See the end of my Salon story [alt: local edition]. For an intriguing (and quite entertaining) debate between Harris and a religious believer, Catholic journalist Andrew Sullivan, you might want to check out their back-and-forth exchanges on Beliefnet.

In the last few years, a small cottage industry of scientists and philosophers has devoted itself to explaining the origins of religion. Robin Marantz Henig offers a good synopsis in her New York Times Magazine story Darwin’s God (March 4, 2007). But she’s wrong to describe the work of these scientists as the science of God; it’s only one small piece of the science of religion. Most of the books on the origins of religion are written by atheists who want to demystify the divine. Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Viking, 2006) argues that religion is a meme that infected our ancestors and continued to spread throughout cultures. Biologist Lewis Wolpert’s Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief (W.W. Norton, 2006) dismisses the idea of memes and posits another theory. He argues that religion developed once hominids understood cause and effect, which allowed them to make complex tools. Once they started to make causal connections, they felt compelled to explain life’s mysteries. Their brains, in essence, turned into “belief engines”. Primatologist Barbara J. King is more sympathetic to religion. In Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion (Doubleday, 2007), she argues that religion is rooted in our social and emotional connections with each other (as opposed to belief in a supernatural being), and she thinks chimps and gorillas can offer clues as to how the religious impulse first started.

Evolution & Faith

Once you get past the debates over scriptural interpretations of creation, as well as ID’s attempts to poke holes in evolutionary theory, you’re left with a deep philosophical problem: Are human beings just an evolutionary accident, a fluke of natural selection? That premise is unacceptable to religious believers. Here are some thoughtful books on religion and evolution.

Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Cambridge University Press, 2003). His argument for evolutionary convergence is finding more acceptance among biologists—at least until he gets to the inevitability of humans. His argument has huge religious implications: No, we’re not evolutionary accidents after all! The non-specialist may get bogged down in some of the book’s technical details, though it’s shot through with Conway Morris’ trademark wit.

Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (Harvard University Press, expanded edition 2006). The definitive history of creationism, I found it quite surprising. For instance, I had no idea that there are several competing versions of creationism, and these are all quite different from intelligent design. Numbers is a fascinating figure in the debate over evolution. A former Seventh-day Adventist, he’s the rare scholar who’s respected by both creationists and evolutionary biologists.

Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (Simon and Schuster, 1995). By now, it’s easy to take natural selection for granted because the idea has been around for so long. Dennett reminds us why it’s still such a revolutionary idea. He says evolution is like a universal acid; it eats away at everything it touches. This is a wonderfully written argument against the idea of an agent in the evolutionary process.

John Haught, Deeper than Darwin: The Prospect for Religion in the Age of Evolution (Westview Press, 2003) and God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution (Westview Press, 2000). If you want a well-argued religious response to Dennett, I recommend Haught. He makes the case that evolution hasn’t rendered life meaningless because Darwinism offers intermediate, not ultimate, explanations. And he says the enemy of religion isn’t science but scientific naturalism. Haught was the only theologian who testified at the recent Dover trial. (He weighed in against the ID side.)

Michael Ruse, The Evolution–Creation Struggle (Harvard University Press, 2005) and Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? The Relationship Between Science and Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2000). Ruse, a philosopher and an agnostic, sees no inherent conflict between evolution and religion. He recently traded barbs with Dawkins, who accused Ruse of being part of the Neville Chamberlain school of evolutionists because he accepts Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria. Ruse is very good at laying out various competing ideas about evolution, and his account of Darwin’s own thinking about religion is especially valuable.

Origins of the Universe

Cosmologists and theoretical physicists sure know how to have fun! There’s a spate of books about all kinds of strange and controversial ideas: multiple universes, quantum entanglement, and the anthropic principle. These ideas coming out of physics have huge implications for the science and religion discussion. Evolutionary theory may leave no room for a creator, but it’s still anybody’s guess how the universe began or why it’s structured the way it is.

Paul Davies, The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World (Simon and Schuster, 1993) and The Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life (Houghton Mifflin, 2007). A major figure in the debate over the anthropic principle, Davies is also one of the clearest writers when it comes to explaining complex physics. The Cosmic Jackpot is a dazzling overview of competing theories about our life-friendly universe. Davies himself admits that his theory is probably wrong, but he deserves kudos for asking the really tough questions.

Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design (Little, Brown 2006). Most physicists hate the anthropic principle; they see it as a way of sneaking God in through the back door. Here’s the response of one leading theoretical physicist: if there are an infinite number of universes, there’s bound to be one that’s oddly friendly to intelligent life. But (as Davies has suggested) is the multiverse just a desperate attempt to keep God at bay?

John Polkinghorne, Quantum Physics and Theology (Yale University Press, 2007) Unlike many of his other wide-ranging books, this slender volume deals with Polkinghorne’s specialty, quantum physics. He argues that there are strong connections between quantum physics and Christian thinking. Personally, I wish his argument would go beyond Christianity, but then, I’ve always found the idea of the Trinity rather baffling.

Owen Gingerich, God’s Universe (Harvard University Press, 2006). Another slim volume that makes an eloquent argument for a universe made of intention and purpose. He’s careful to distinguish between a divine design and the God of the gaps position of the ID crowd.

The science and religion debate tends to be dominated by Christians and atheists. Here are two intriguing books by Jewish religious scholars, both suggesting points of convergence between modern physics and ancient Judaism. Daniel Matt, God and the Big Bang: Discovering Harmony Between Science and Spirituality (Jewish Lights Publishing, 1996). Matt is a leading scholar of the Kabbalah with a keen interest in creation stories in both science and religion. Rabbi David W. Nelson, Judaism, Physics and God: Searching for Sacred Metaphors in a Post-Einstein World (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2005). Nelson focuses more on recent developments in physics, especially quantum mechanics. He’s especially interested in religious language that still resonates in our scientific age.

James N. Gardner, Biocosm: The New Scientific Theory of Evolution: Intelligent Life is the Architect of the Universe (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2003). A terrific synthesis of far-out ideas in cosmology and biology—ranging from John Wheeler’s vision of a participatory universe to Ray Kurzweil’s high-tech conscious universe. It’s an argument for a universe with purpose and design that never invokes God. It’s a high-wire act, highly speculative but great fun to read.

Joel R. Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams, The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos (Riverhead Books, 2006). Primack is one of the cosmologists who came up with the idea of dark matter. He and Abrams, a lawyer who’s fascinated by mythic traditions, argue for a new myth for our time, one that’s based completely on the latest scientific findings. It’s their attempt to stave off existential dread: Are we really just an insignificant speck in the universe? They make the argument that we on Earth are actually quite special, cosmologically. I found this to be a compelling though not entirely convincing argument.

Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology (Princeton University Press, 1999). There’s a big fight between atheists and religious believers over who gets to claim Einstein for their side. Was he a deist? Or were his suggestive comments about religion mere exercises in poetic language? This is a book-length examination of Einstein’s thinking on religion.

Neuroscience & Spirit

I’ve come to see consciousness as one of the major battlegrounds in the science and religion debate. There are clear religious implications to the whole mind/brain conundrum. If your mind can communicate with God—or if there really is life after death—then consciousness must go beyond the purely physical mechanics of the brain. It’s why most, though not all, atheists line up on the side of materialism, while religious believers assume the mind is more than the brain. But even atheists like Dawkins say consciousness is a huge scientific mystery. Here are a few books that deal explicitly with the religious implications of new brain science. I’ll also mention 2006 T–C Fellow Jay Tolson’s cover story in U.S. News and World Report Is There Room for the Soul? [alt: local edition] (October 23, 2006).

B. Alan Wallace, Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge (Columbia University Press, 2007) and Wallace, editor, Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground (Columbia University Press, 2003). Any look at the connection between religion and neuroscience has to consider Buddhism, with its long history of disciplined meditation. Wallace, an ex-Buddhist monk who got a doctorate in religious studies, may be the American Buddhist most committed to finding connections between ancient contemplative practices and modern science. He’s well-versed in quantum physics, which he considers crucial to understanding the science of the mind. And his theories about different levels of consciousness are fascinating, though highly speculative.

Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality and Truth (Free Press, 2006) and Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili, Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (Ballantine Books, 2001). Newberg has done groundbreaking brain imaging studies of meditating Buddhists, praying Franciscan nuns and singing Pentecostals. His work, along with Richard Davidson’s, is revealing what happens in the brain during religious experience. But it’s still unclear whether a scientific lab will ever capture a major mystical experience.

Roger Penrose, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind (Cambridge University Press, 1997) along with responses by Abner Shimony, Nancy Cartwright and Stephen Hawking. A renowned mathematician and physicist, Penrose turned to consciousness after he heard AI expert Marvin Minsky say the brain is like a computer. That idea infuriated him. This is one of his most accessible books, in which he makes his highly speculative argument for quantum computation. I find Penrose a fascinating figure in the consciousness debate. He has little interest in religion, but his theories about the mind are often cited by those with a religious bent.

Philip Clayton, Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness (Oxford University Press, 2004). Why is the human brain so different from other animal brains? The question has important religious implications. Clayton is a philosopher who’s extremely well informed about science. He argues that the new science of emergence challenges Darwinian orthodoxy and may help us understand consciousness. I found his presentation during the 2006 seminars to be very thought-provoking.

Faith & Reason

Many arguments about science and religion turn on questions of language, especially how we understand words like “religion” and “God”. Atheists often resort to simplistic interpretations (and they love to quote the most objectionable passages in the Bible), while believers can be fuzzy in their definitions. There’s a surprising amount of disagreement about some very basic religious ideas; e.g., whether religion requires the belief in a supernatural being. For someone like me, with a secular orientation who’s also fascinated by the religious imagination, books that embrace the sacred without losing their grounding in reason and skepticism are especially valuable.

Karen Armstrong, A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Knopf, 1993). A brilliant re-reading of sacred texts, though so densely detailed that I found myself dipping into select chapters. Armstrong is a major figure in revisionist thinking about religious history. She says the great religious sages didn’t care that much about theological systems or belief in a personal God. Instead, they cared about the Golden Rule. For a summary of her views, you can look at my Salon interview [alt: local edition].

Huston Smith, Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief (HarperSan Francisco, 2001). A renowned authority on comparative religion, Smith says the core of religion is transcendent experience. In recent years, he’s become so disillusioned with what he considers the arrogance of scientific materialism that he has embraced ID’s critique of evolution. Like Armstrong, Smith finds the religious mystics especially appealing.

There’s a fascinating movement among some non-believing scientists and philosophers to reclaim religion from a non-theistic perspective. They don’t believe in God, but they also don’t like the fallback position of many atheists. Here are two books and a web article along these lines: Ursula Goodenough, The Sacred Depths of Nature (Oxford University Press, 1998). A cell biologist’s celebration of the awe and wonder of nature, which, in her mind, comes close to the religious experience of awe. Stuart Kauffman, Beyond Reductionism: Reinventing the Sacred (posted November 13, 2006 on John Brockman’s website Edge). Kauffman is a biologist who’s pioneered the theory of self-organization. He believes science can remake our understanding of the sacred. Loyal Rue, Religion Is Not About God (Rugers University Press, 2005). Rue, a philosopher at Luther College, argues that religion is not just about belief in a supernatural being. Successful religions invoke a myth tradition through their use of symbols and rituals to create our sense of morality.

Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (Oxford University Press, 2004) and In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad (Oxford University Press, 2007). Ramadan has been called Europe’s leading Muslim intellectual. He’s also hugely controversial (largely because his grandfather founded the Muslim Brotherhood). Ramadan isn’t really an expert on science, but he’s thought a great deal about how to reconcile the faith of a devout Muslim with Western rationalism. He’s a fascinating figure because he’s trying to reform Islam from within, at times walking a tightrope between secular Europeans and Middle Eastern imams. His biography of Muhammad offers more liberal interpretations of scripture.