Essay One - Christian Responses to Science – too Apologetic or too Radical?

Opening Comments

I must, of course, begin by thanking Dick Martin and Paul Smith for their kind invitation to speak and to thank you for coming to participate. Preparing for today has allowed me the opportunity to explore certain ideas in a more systematic and purposeful way.

In order to try to keep to time and thereby to allow scope for discussion, each session will begin with a brief introductory essay in which ideas will be raised rather than full arguments provided. This I think is appropriate. I am intending to be a facilitator of debate rather than an instructor.

Probably my favourite scientific story is that of the physicist Enrico Fermi (1901-1954). At the end of a lecture given by a guest speaker, he was charged with giving the vote of thanks. He began by saying that before the lecture, he was confused by the subject. Now having heard the lecture, he was still confused – but, importantly, at a much higher level. Thus, the speaker could be duly thanked not for resolving Fermi's initial confusion but for elevating it. I hope that there will be some element of that today.

At the outset, I must say that I am taking my own approach to the issue of the interaction of science and religion. If pushed, I would describe myself as a philosophical biologist – I no longer do practical experiments; I think about things in a certain way, instead. My aim is to try to make sense of biological objects and their existence. Unlike many who look to physics and cosmology when considering the interaction of science and religion, I remain largely biological. Hence, today's title.

Essay One

To the title 'Faith in a Darwinian World', I might add a tentative subtitle: 'From the heavens telling to the mind of Mankind reflecting' and in this first session I should like to consider how we understand what is around us and what we are hearing from commentators on the subject – both from the scientific and the faith communities.

This year is a year of many anniversaries as we will see throughout the day. It is the bicentenary of the births, in 1809, of William Gladstone (1809-1898) (who just squeezed in, being born on December 29th), Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and – on the same day as Lincoln: Feb 12th – Charles Darwin. It is also the 150th anniversary of the publication, on 24th November 1859, of his seminal work 'On the Origin of Species'.

However, we are not here to 'celebrate' in any adulatory sense the life of Darwin – or any of these other lives – we are here, I suggest, to consider Darwin's legacy. It is not the nineteenth century historical details that matter to us but the twenty-first century significance of what Darwin was first to realize about the world and how that world is now affected.

Darwin helped change our view not only of the biological phenomena with which we primarily associate him but also of the very planet upon which we walk. It is often overlooked that Darwin caused a seismic shift in geological thought (pun intended). But his ideas did much more than that. I was recently fortunate enough to review a book entitled 'Endless Forms'. This book accompanies an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and the Yale Center for British Art looking at the effect Darwin's ideas had on the visual arts. It is quite clear that Darwin had a cultural effect on the mind of the artist; life was portrayed differently – less romantically and with more scientific edge – at the end of the nineteenth century than at the beginning.

What Darwin did – and continues to do – is affect our whole worldview. To think with a pre-Darwinian mind is quite different to thinking with a post-Darwinian one.

Although there had been evolutionary ideas before his, Darwin's ideas – most notably that of evolution by natural selection – literally fused the dimension of time to biology; the very architecture of living things was not fixed; not set down according to some plan but had an innate capacity for change.

Many of the deeper questions about life asked today are questions that were asked before Darwin. Now we have different ways of looking at those questions; different ways of being confused – Darwin allows us to be confused at a much higher level.

This shift in thinking, I see as a potentially ontological shift rather than a more general metaphysical one. Just to clarify these terms: metaphysics is the study of reality which, importantly, goes beyond the objective observations made by science. Most scientists with a religious faith concerned with the interaction of science and religion seem to hover around the metaphysical questions more readily associated with physics and cosmology – questions of causation, space and time, for example – or else, if they are biologists, are often concerned with bioethics. Ontology, on the other hand, is the philosophical study of the nature of being and existence and is concerned with what it means for something to be. As such it is a sub-division of metaphysics that runs parallel to that addressing questions about causation, space and time etc.

For what it is worth, it has been noted that apparently, in the senior ranks of the Royal Society, there are relatively few biologists with a religious faith whereas there are numerous physicists and astronomers of faith. Those who look up and marvel at the heavens or those who look down and marvel at the atom appear to be more likely to have religious faith than biologists whose realm is somewhere in the middle.

It is from the ranks of the physicists and astronomers of faith that most of the support for religion comes in its debate with science. However, what they have written on the subject, I have found to be rather uninteresting; even pointless. Little of it, I suggest, would have much appeal to any biologist – or even to the layperson. Also, much of it appears to be concerned with an apologetic stance: with the argument that, given the way the universe works, it is reasonable to believe in the existence of a God. Although which God that is, is not always entirely clear.

However, there is something of great importance much closer to hand and that is that we often forget that we exist and don't consider what it means to exist. How odd it is for matter to have self-awareness and consciousness. Instead of looking up at the stars or down at the atom in wonderment, I would like to suggest that we should be looking somewhere in between and be wondering more about what it is 'to be'.

To my mind, there is little or nothing to be had in arguing about the existence or otherwise of God. (And what that means in an increasingly multi-faith culture is another matter.) However, if the God of Christ were to be shown rationally to exist surely there would not be any need for faith – least of all a faith which holds even when one feels forsaken by the one in whom that faith is placed.

I've accused some Christian responses to science as being 'too apologetic' in their defence of their religion. However, there are those who see themselves as 'radical' – some might say that 'reactionary' is a better description. These people see themselves literally as defenders of (the one true) faith and not uncommonly ground their views on strict interpretations of scripture. I don't know how much time this forum wants to spend on fundamentalist Christian beliefs but their actions are certainly culturally significant. Theirs is often the only voice scientists hear – more rational Christians don't seem to go in for slanging matches with scientists – and so the fundamentalist voice becomes the representative voice of all Christian faith.

What both the 'apologists' and the 'radicals' seem to have in common is a sense of defence – both are standing up for what they believe. However, defence, if it is about standing one's ground and holding to a position, I find potentially too static; there is no sense of stretching one's faith or of expanding into new areas where one might find oneself confused. Indeed, for certain 'defenders' of faith, confusion may even be seen as weakness. But is it really? Faith is played out in a world about which we are still finding out new things. Confusion is perhaps inevitable and should, therefore, be embraced for what it offers. Into this flux, Darwinian ingredients have now been added.

To Consider:

• What do we make of the 'debate' between science and religion?

• Where should we place the emphasis?