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Science and Faith, the British Way
Some of the most prominent researchers in England enjoy a vibrant religious life that coexists with their immersion in the scientific world. Indeed, these evangelicals might give American believers, and scientists, something to think about.
by Mark Pinsky
From Charles Darwin to Richard Dawkins, science has been seen as an ally of atheism, religion's aggressive adversary.
“Historically, religious faith–and its denial–have played a major part in science,” says Keith Ward, author of The Big Questions in Science and Religion. The pioneering work of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler all came into conflict with church authorities and doctrines, although these astronomers and cosmologists insisted they were sincere believers. In fact, theology was once considered the “queen of the sciences.”
Modern scientists do not routinely identify their spiritual affiliation; it's extremely difficult to say for certain how many are religious. Even so, among contemporary American scientists, many–perhaps a majority–have declared themselves skeptics, secularists, agnostics and atheists. Carl Sagan, arguably America's best-known cosmologist, and an agnostic, wrote a book titled The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
Among the Protestant evangelicals who have dominated the political and cultural discourse on this subject in the U.S. news media, such researchers often are considered enemies of faith. (Some fundamentalist Muslims view science in the same light, while much of mainline Christianity and Judaism have long made peace with science.) As a religion writer with a growing interest in science, I've wondered how science/religion tensions play out in other cultures. On a recent fellowship at the University of Cambridge, scientists I met did not fit the stereotypes common to American popular culture.
While impossible to quantify, a surprising number of prominent British researchers at the pinnacle of their fields, with worldwide reputations in the physical and biological sciences, proclaim their evangelical Christian faith. And they are not perfunctory adherents, merely showing up for Sunday worship; they believe in acting on their beliefs. Some have taken up weekend pulpits.
Their roster includes Sir John Houghton, former head of the United Kingdom's Meteorological Office; Sir John Polkinghorne, a particle physicist, Anglican priest and author of numerous books on science and religion; Sir Brian Heap, a biologist; geologist Robert W. White and paleobiologist Simon Conway Morris. I asked these scientists the sources of their belief, and the answers they gave me were intriguing to someone who for years has been more immersed in the world of American evangelicals, where I frequently found that hostility toward science seemed to be the norm in public controversies. These Brits cited a disparate mixture of empirical scientific evidence and the veracity of Scripture for their Christianity, based equally on science and faith.
First, they say the likelihood that intelligent, carbon-based life originated in the universe by chance is infinitesimally minute. And second, they proclaim their belief in what they accept as the firsthand, biblical accounts of Jesus' life, death and physical resurrection.
In large measure, these scientists have been able to avoid being dragged into the hotbed of cultural issues that have preoccupied evangelicals in the USA. While, as a group, they tend to oppose abortion and gay marriage, they hold more nuanced views than their American counterparts on when human life begins and when it ends, as well as on such controversial issues as stem cell research.
These English researchers embrace the concept known as “theistic evolution”, entailing a God-created universe that is billions of years old in which Darwinian evolution operates. They scoff at the notions of creationism and intelligent design, and they insist that religious faith should not affect their research. “I can't tell the difference in research in physics done by a religious believer and that done by an atheist,” Polkinghorne told me.
To be sure, there are some equally prominent American scientists–such as Francis Collins, until recently head of the Human Genome Project, and environmentalist Calvin DeWitt of the University of Wisconsin–who fall into this category of believers. Also, the American Scientific Affiliation encompasses diversity among Christian scientists in the USA. But such perspectives are often drowned out by fundamentalists and other evangelical researchers who tend to disagree. They bash mainstream scientific conclusions in papers such as Evolution Exposed,” and they also seem to challenge the scientific method itself.
Why this apparent difference between the U.S. and U.K. in the public perception of the dialogue between science and religion among leaders in their respective fields? It's dangerous to extrapolate from a relatively small sample, but I suspect that demographics, law and politics might be involved.
Evangelicals are widespread and vocal in the U.S., less so in Europe. Christians in the USA enjoy broadcast privileges not shared by some of their European cousins, whose laws more severely restrict religious broadcasting. U.S. Christians–especially conservative ones–use the airwaves extensively to advance their positions on a range of issues that include science and medicine. Science education in the U.S. has become a hot political issue ripe for sound-bite frenzy; one of the most popular online articles circulated by evangelicals is Ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution.
We in the news media must accept some responsibility for quoting the most extreme spokespeople, such as E. Calvin Beisner, founder of the Virginia-based Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, as exemplars of evangelical thinking on scientific issues.
“The North American scene is puzzling because it is so polarized,” Polkinghorne, the British physicist, observed.
Part of the reason the division is not so sharp in the U.K. is the way the Brits define themselves as “open-minded” evangelical Christians. Polkinghorne now spends much of his time writing about the frontiers of science and religion, and about what he calls the dialogue between physics and metaphysics.
Nonetheless, once they reach objective findings, the English scientists say their religious faith does influence the way they want to see their research understood, interpreted and applied.
On one issue in particular, climate change, evangelical scientists in Britain have taken the lead. With near missionary zeal, many have used their research and that of their colleagues to become advocates and activists in combating global warming and greenhouse gas emissions.
Houghton, for example, is credited with turning around British public opinion on climate change while he headed his country's Met Office, the equivalent of the U.S. National Weather Service. In turn, Houghton has played a pivotal role in persuading a new generation of American evangelical leaders that they should embrace the issue as one of “creation care,” of biblical stewardship of the earth. Until then, evangelical scientists in the U.S. had been skeptical of the growing body of research that the earth is warming and, if it is, that the cause is human activity.
“The impact of global warming is such that I have no doubt in describing it as a weapon of mass destruction,” Houghton told a meeting of British Baptists earlier this year. Dealing with it, he said, is not a scientific and technical matter, “but a moral and spiritual one.”
U.S. evangelical leaders might take a cue from their British cousins and their lesser-known American kin, and embrace innovative scientific research at its highest levels, rather than seeing it as a threat. Why? As the Jewish agnostic Albert Einstein put it, because they need one another: “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.”
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