For Further Reading

Chapter 6

Science and Religion: Some Major Contemporary Debates

In earlier chapters, we considered some general themes relating to science and religion. The present chapter takes a different approach, considering nine contemporary debates within this broad field. Each is interesting in its own right, but also illuminates some specific aspects of the field of science and religion.

The first debate concerns whether science is able to establish moral values. This is an important question which often features in wider cultural debates about whether human moral values depend upon some transcendent grounding – such as those traditionally associated with religion.

Moral Philosophy: Can the Natural Sciences establish Moral Values?

The relation of the natural sciences and ethics has often been examined. At present, there is a broad consensus within the literature that the sciences may inform ethical decision‐making, but not serve as the basis of ethics. The views of Albert Einstein on this matter have found wide acceptance. Einstein argued that the natural sciences cannot create moral goals, even though they may provide means by which they could be achieved. ‘Science cannot create ends and, even less, instill them in human beings; science, at most, can supply the means by which to attain certain ends.’ Moral objectives or values do not arise as a result of scientific inquiry, although science might help implement their application – for example, in the field of medicine.

Einstein was clear that ‘those convictions which are necessary and determinant for our conduct and judgements’ lie beyond the scope of the natural sciences.

The scientific method can teach us nothing beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. … The knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduce from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations.

Einstein is clear that both the identity of this goal, and the motivation to reach it, ‘must come from another source’.

The eighteenth‐century philosopher David Hume is widely credited with establishing the disjunction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’. In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume considers the question of ‘Moral Distinctions Not derived from Reason’. There is, he pointed out, a significant difference between positive statements about what is and prescriptive or normative statements about what ought to be. Hume did not say that this could not be done; he rightly noted that it was not a straightforward process.

For Hume, there seemed to be no logically valid arguments from non‐moral observation to moral prescription. The force of Hume's point is somewhat reduced by the fact that at various points in his writings, he himself draws particular moral conclusions towards which he is personally sympathetic by inference from causal, factual premises. Nevertheless, his point remains significant: it is difficult to move from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones.

Hume's argument has, as might be expected, been subjected to extensive scrutiny, and is often the starting point for discussions about the relation between science and morality. How might scientific analysis of our world – which is about description and interpretation of that world – be connected with statements about how we ought to act within that world. To explore this question, we shall consider two broad areas of discussion: first, whether Darwin's theory of natural selection can act as the basis for human moral values; and second, whether the notion of ‘wellbeing’ can serve as the foundation for ethics.

Evolution and Ethics: The Debate about Darwinism and Morality

Thomas H. Huxley was one of the most noted supporters of Darwin's theory of natural selection in England during the Victorian period. Although his 1860 Oxford debate with Samuel Wilberforce has been seriously misrepresented in works of popular science, there is no doubt of his firm intellectual grasp of Darwin's theory of natural selection, nor his reasons for believing that it was scientifically reliable. But what was its relevance for moral philosophy?

In his 1893 Romanes Lecture at Oxford University, entitled ‘Evolution and Ethics’, Huxley made it clear that he considered ethics and Darwinian evolutionary theory to be radically incompatible. Although Hume's concerns about the relation of ‘is’ and ‘ought’ can be discerned in Huxley's analysis, his core point is that human beings are fundamentally animals that have triumphed in the ‘struggle for existence’ on account of their ‘ruthless and ferocious destructiveness’. Yet this capacity for violence and destruction, once a virtue, becomes a vice with the emergence of social culture. As a result, the moral characteristics which allowed human beings to triumph in the ‘struggle for existence’ are no longer seen to be ‘reconcilable with sound ethical principles’.

Ethics, for Huxley, is thus a principled resistance to precisely those animal qualities that secured human domination of the living world, and the Darwinian processes that underlie them. We must learn to conquer and subdue the natural animal instincts that linger within us. Our hereditary history continues to shape our present – and it must be resisted, even though it cannot be eradicated. ‘The practice of that which is ethically best – what we call goodness or virtue – involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence.’ While evolution may explain the origins of ethics, it cannot function as the basis of ethics.

Evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before.

This leads Huxley to draw the conclusion that, were civilization and culture to collapse, humanity would revert to its former violent ways. Huxley invited his Oxford audience to imagine a piece of land in its natural state, and then compare this with what it would look like if someone were to transform that landscape into a garden. Yet the garden requires to be maintained. If its gardeners were to cease cultivating the garden, it would return to its natural state. For Huxley, the collapse of human culture would lead to the reversion of humanity to its natural animal state.

Others, however, disagreed with Huxley's estimation – including his grandson, the noted biologist Julian Huxley. In 1943 – fifty years after his grandfather's Oxford lecture – Julian Huxley argued that an understanding of the evolutionary process allows us to understand how ‘ought’ emerges from ‘is’. Evolution was moving towards a definite goal, and the emergence of ethics was part of that goal. Edward O. Wilson's book Sociobiology (1975) agreed with Julian Huxley that ethics arises from the evolutionary process, but rejected the idea that evolution is directed or consciously moving toward some goal. Although Wilson could see no biological foundation for Julian Huxley's concerns, he was quite clear of the importance of biology in accounting for the origins of moral values. ‘Scientists and humanists should consider together the possibility that the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized.’ The origins of human moral intuitions were to be accounted for in terms of the evolutionary history of humanity.

Wilson did not propose his own ‘biologicized’ ethic, but probed some of the questions that he considered to require further exploration in the wider field of ethics. For example, are our moral instincts inherited from the past, reflecting long‐gone historical contexts? When viewed from a strictly scientific perspective, Wilson's approach raised important questions. Is the human capacity for normative guidance to be seen as a biological adaptation, which may have conferred a selective advantage in the past – though not necessarily in the present – by enhancing social cohesion and cooperation within groups? And, if so, does this invalidate or confirm such norms of behaviour and feelings? Richard Alexander offers a helpful reflection on the problems we face in trying to reflect on the complex relation between evolution and ethics.

Evolutionary analysis can tell us much about our history and existing systems of laws and norms, and also about how to achieve any goals deemed desirable; but it has essentially nothing to say about what goals are desirable, or the directions in which laws and norms should be modified in the future.

Neuroscience and Ethics: Sam Harris on the Moral Landscape

In recent years, many works have appeared offering scientific accounts of why morality is important, or why human beings consider certain moral values to be significant. A good example is Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2013), which offers some important insights drawn from psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Yet it is important to note that Haidt's analysis is not concerned with the scientific determination of moral values. His concern is to help his readers negotiate the issues that arise from moral intuitions and debates. Haidt himself does not take a stand on what is to be judged to be good or bad but is concerned with exploring what individuals and societies actually consider to be good or bad, whether or not they are right in doing so.

Yet some have argued that science is able to determine and define objective moral values. In 2011, Sam Harris published The Moral Landscape, a short work arguing for the objectivity of moral values, which he held to be securely grounded in the natural sciences, particularly neuroscience. Harris was critical of E. O. Wilson's reflections on the relation of evolution and ethics, arguing that, while evolution did not design us ‘to lead deeply fulfilling lives’, human ethical reflection must clearly take this goal into account. Harris's approach to ethics goes much further than Albert Einstein, who both acknowledged and welcomed an informing scientific perspective on moral questions. For Harris, science can and should determine our values – a theme explicitly stated in the work's subtitle ‘How Science Can Determine Human Values’.

Harris's advocacy of an objective scientific morality has three core elements, all focusing on the objective determination of the ‘well‐being of conscious creatures’:

However, critical readers of Harris are likely to conclude that he merely asserts the untested and inherently untestable hypothesis that morality is to be deemed equivalent to maintaining or enhancing the ‘well‐being of conscious creatures’. This core presupposition does not appear to be derived from any form of empirical investigation, however provisional. It is an unevidenced, metaphysical assumption, not a scientific conclusion. So what scientific reasons might be given for preferring Harris's definitions of moral terms in preference to the rival versions offered by social contract theorists, virtue ethicists, or any other of the many schools of moral theory currently on offer?

One of the most significant criticisms of Harris is due to the American biologist and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, who argues for the need to distinguish between value judgements and matters of fact. Pigliucci pointed out that Harris appears to be making a fundamental categorical mistake: ‘What he calls values are instead empirical facts about how to achieve human wellbeing.’ For example, Harris criticizes the corporal punishment of children. Pigliucci shares this view, but points out how Harris makes himself vulnerable on this issue:

What if a scientific study showed that indeed, hitting children does have a measurable effect on improving those desirable traits? Harris would then have to concede that corporal punishment is moral, but somehow I doubt he would. And I certainly wouldn’t, because my moral intuition (yes, that’s what I’m going to call it, deal with it) tells me that purposefully inflicting pain on children is wrong, regardless of whatever the empirical evidence says.

George Ellis develops this point further, pointing out the influence of cultural factors in determining whether it is the wellbeing of individuals or communities that is of greater importance. Might Harris's view reflect the core assumptions of a WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) culture, which is taken for granted by those living in such cultures, but not elsewhere. Many Asian cultures, for example, consider that the welfare of a group trumps the welfare of individuals. Is Harris simply assuming as self‐evidently true some views that have secured traction in sections of Western culture, yet are not accepted anywhere else?

In the end, Harris's emphasis on the ‘maximization of well‐being’ leads him to adopt the ethical position usually known as ‘utilitarianism’ (although Harris does not himself describe his position in this way). Yet this approach to morality fails to explain why the maximization of the ‘well‐being of conscious creatures’ is of moral significance. The philosopher Whitley Kaufman points out a problem with Harris's strategy:

It makes the term ‘well‐being’ so utterly vacuous that we no longer have any moral theory at all, for now we need a theory to tell us what constitutes well‐being, and how such values as justice and happiness are to be traded off against each other.

Kaufman further highlights the fact that Harris's defence of his ethical method is actually philosophical, not scientific. Although Harris continually appeals to ‘science’, he is in fact presenting a contentious and rather implausible moral philosophy.

One of the oddities of this book is that the single concrete finding that Harris claims to have made in the book, that utilitarianism is the correct moral theory (the rest is mere promissory notes about a future science of ethics), is not in any reasonable sense a ‘scientific’ finding.

For Kaufman, there is no meaningful sense in which the ‘scientific method’ applies to these moral issues. Harris, he argues, does not bring any special expertise to the debate as a neuroscientist, or draw on any dramatic and compelling new findings from the realm of science in defending his position.

Harris's argument for the moral authority of science ultimately rests on unacknowledged core philosophical principles. Many would suggest his approach represents a form of scientism, which seeks to extend the scope of science through a rhetorical trivialization of the moral authority of its obvious cultural alternatives – philosophy and religion. Moral philosophy and theology have a long history of reflection on the classic themes of ethics, and their application to everyday life. As Pigliucci points out, the suggestion of an analogy between physical health and well‐being (or flourishing) is not new, and is an important aspect of neo‐Aristotelian philosophical reflection.

Harris's views on the capacity of science to determine moral values naturally leads us to reflect further on questions relating to the scope of science, particularly in relation to religion. In what follows, we shall consider the highly contested issue of whether reality is limited to what can be uncovered or disclosed by the scientific method.

Philosophy of Science: Is Reality Limited to What the Sciences Can Disclose?

We use many tools to understand our world and our place within it, and to explore the question of how we should live authentically and meaningfully. Science, ethics, poetry, and religion all feed into this discussion. The natural sciences have achieved considerable success in explaining aspects of the structure and behaviour of the universe. So how do the natural sciences relate to other sources of knowledge?

There are two central questions here. The first is to identify the distinct methods that are characteristic of the natural sciences and consider how these relate to other forms of inquiry – such as philosophy or theology. The second is to ask whether either the scientific method itself, or the outcomes of its application, have some privileged or even exclusive authority in determining what is true knowledge. Some refer to such an approach as a ‘strong methodological naturalism’, which holds that ‘the only valid source of knowledge of the natural world is the natural sciences’. Others, such as Massimo Pigliucci, use the term ‘scientism’ to designate the ‘totalizing attitude that regards science as the ultimate standard and arbiter of all interesting questions; or alternatively that seeks to expand the very definition and scope of science to encompass all aspects of human knowledge and understanding.’

A good example of this approach can be seen in the writings of the Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin, who argues that a materialist ontology – which he considers to be fundamental to the scientific method – entails commitment to scientism. Despite all its failings and contradictions, science is the only reliable way of understanding our world.

When science speaks to members of the general public the problem is to get them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth. … We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just‐so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

Yet Lewontin seems unwilling to face up to the fact that what he defends here is not science, but a specific metaphysical position which lies beyond the scope of science to confirm. Lewontin merely equates science with a philosophical naturalism or materialism, apparently failing to realize that there is a substantial metaphysical gulf between methodological naturalism and a philosophical naturalism. Why, it may reasonably be asked, does a scientist have to sign up to ‘materialism’?

The American philosopher Alex Rosenberg is an excellent example of a self‐defined ‘scientistic’ writer who insists that reality is limited to what the sciences – specifically physics – can disclose. In his Atheist's Guide to Reality, Rosenberg argues that the only reality is that which can be disclosed by the application of the scientific method.

Science provides all the significant truths about reality, and knowing such truths is what real understanding is all about. … Being scientistic just means treating science as our exclusive guide to reality, to nature – both our own nature and everything else's.

Rosenberg concedes that scientism finds itself trapped in a viciously circular argument from which no experiment can extricate it, in that it has to assume its own authority in order to confirm it. Having adopted an epistemology which limits reality to what science can disclose, scientism makes the ontological claim that reality is limited to what science can disclose. For this reason, Rosenberg argues we cannot validly hold to moral values, in that these cannot be established securely by the scientific method. ‘We have to be nihilists about the purpose of things in general, about the purpose of biological life in particular, and the purpose of life in general.’ There is, he declares, no fundamental difference between right and wrong, good and bad. So is he right to argue in this way?

The natural sciences are widely held to be characterized by ‘methodological naturalism’ – an attempt to identify the processes and patterns that can be discerned within the natural world, and to formulate theories which appear capable of accounting for these regularities. This is fundamentally an attempt to offer a coherent understanding of nature itself, which allows us to position events and observations within a wider and deeper explanatory context. This research method will vary from one scientific discipline to another, in that its formulation and application will depend on the precise object of study, and the limits that this imposes upon its investigation. Ontology, so to speak, determines epistemology; the nature of the object under investigation determines how it is known, and the extent to which it can be known.

The natural sciences are thus a way of understanding the natural world on the basis of the natural forces and processes which may be observed within it, or inferred to exist from what is observed. Newton's concept of gravity is a good example of an unobserved force whose existence was indicated by observations of the natural world. Methodological naturalism is the method of investigation that is characteristic of the natural sciences; this does not, however, exclude other research methods or approaches to reality. They may be right – but they are not scientific.

Science has established a set of tested and reliable rules and methods by which it investigates reality, and ‘methodological materialism’ is one of them. Yet this is about developing reliable and workable rules for exploring reality, not limiting reality to what can be explored in this way. It does not mean that science is committed to some kind of philosophical materialism. While it is true that some materialists argue that the explanatory successes of science seems to endorse an underlying ontological materialism, this is simply one of several ways of interpreting this approach, and there are others with widespread support within the scientific community. Eugenie Scott, then director of the National Center for Science Education, made this point neatly back in 1993: ‘Science neither denies nor opposes the supernatural, but ignores the supernatural for methodological reasons.’ Science is a non‐theistic, not an anti‐theistic, way of engaging reality.

It is important to note that the scientific commitment to a methodological naturalism means that the sciences are unable to comment meaningfully on theological questions. The consensual working method of the natural sciences proceeds as if the natural world is to be investigated and explained using purely natural categories. This means that scientific answers are determined by this methodology; in that theistic or ‘supernatural’ entities or theories are excluded as a matter of principle by this method, science cannot comment on theological matters. They are not amenable to investigation by scientific methods.

Some writers have suggested that an expanded vision of the natural sciences might include theistic assumptions. The philosopher Alvin Plantinga, for example, argued that Christians should include such Christian ideas as special divine action within their scientific reflection. Others have resisted this development, pointing out that these are non‐scientific assumptions which can nevertheless be woven into a greater vision of reality than the natural sciences are able to offer unaided. As Ernan McMullin points out: ‘Methodological naturalism does not restrict our study of nature; it just lays down which sort of study qualifies as scientific.’ Other research methods beyond the natural sciences may supplement their insights.

Where Plantinga proposes enfolding theism within an expanded vision of science – which many, it must be said, would not recognize as science! – McMullin proposes weaving scientific insights with theological insights outside a specifically scientific context or method. For McMullin, using methodological naturalism as a research tool in the natural sciences does not commit the Christian to metaphysical naturalism which excludes God from its account of reality. Science is one of a number of ways of explaining and exploring our world; it can be complemented by other methods and approaches.

Some scientists and philosophers, however, argue that science alone can answer all of life's important questions, and thus claim an exclusive authority for the natural sciences in answering them. The philosopher Ian Kidd has argued that three basic ‘impulses’ or ‘urges’ can be seen behind the rise of scientism:

Such forms of scientism are, however, open to some significant criticisms. We have already noted how scientism finds itself trapped in a viciously circular argument from which no experiment can extricate it, in that it has to assume its own authority in order to confirm it. Yet scientism is really a somewhat aggressive naturalist philosophy which has been grafted onto the natural sciences. Inflated forms of scientism, which treat science as the ‘ultimate standard and arbiter of all interesting questions’ are actually making second‐order philosophical claims about science that cannot be verified empirically; a refutation of this point must therefore rest on philosophical, not scientific, arguments. As the American philosopher Edward C. Feser argues, the price of getting out of this vicious circle seems to be forfeiting such spurious claims to intellectual privilege.

To break out of this circle requires ‘getting outside’ of science altogether and discovering from that extra‐scientific vantage point that science conveys an accurate picture of reality – and, if scientism is to be justified, that only science does so. But then the very existence of that extra‐scientific vantage point would falsify the claim that science alone gives us a rational means of investigating objective reality.

These claims on the part of scientism are unsurprisingly seen as being arrogant by non‐scientists. Consider, for example, the views of the Oxford philosopher Timothy Williamson, who points out that Rosenberg's approach has difficulty accounting for the success of mathematics – a point to which we shall return later. ‘Naturalism privileges the scientific method over all others, and mathematics is one of the most spectacular success stories in the history of human knowledge.’ Yet mathematics does not use experimental or empirical methods but proves its results by pure reasoning. It does not fit into Rosenberg's severely impoverished account of how we investigate reality. Mathematical proof is just as effective a route to knowledge as experimental or observational methods.

Perhaps more significantly, Williamson challenges the validity of ‘the extreme naturalist claim that all truths are discoverable by hard science’. Why should we believe that this is true? What is its evidential basis? Williamson's point is difficult to refute.

If it is true that all truths are discoverable by hard science, then it is discoverable by hard science that all truths are discoverable by hard science. But it is not discoverable by hard science that all truths are discoverable by hard science. ‘Are all truths discoverable by hard science?’ is not a question of hard science. Therefore the extreme naturalist claim is not true.

For the philosopher Mary Midgley, ‘scientism's mistake does not lie in over‐praising one form of [knowledge], but in cutting that form off from the rest of thought, in treating it as a victor who has put all the rest out of business.’ Yet the real problem is that the rich variety of human discourses and experience prove resistant to even the most persistent demands that they should be reduced to any single vocabulary, whether this is scientific or something else. Midgley insists that most of the important questions in human life demanded a number of different conceptual tool‐boxes that needed to be used together. If a single perspective on reality is allowed to become normative, the outcome is inevitably a ‘bizarrely restrictive view of meaning’. Midgley's approach recognizes the need for ‘multiple maps’ of a complex reality. No single approach is adequate; different angles of approach and research methodologies are required in order for the human mind to secure a maximal grasp of the universe.

The analysis presented in this section suggests that the natural sciences are best seen as disclosing important – though limited – insights into our universe, which are capable of supplementation or enrichment from other sources, such as moral philosophy or religion.

Philosophy of Religion: Theodicy in a Darwinian World

The question of why suffering or pain exists in the world has been the subject of much discussion. As Richard Dawkins and others have pointed out, from a biological point of view, suffering and death are inevitable elements of the evolutionary process. That's just the way things are. Others, however, see suffering as potentially raising difficulties for their ways of thinking about the world. The continued existence of suffering causes problems for at least two narratives that the sociologist Christian Smith identifies as playing an important role in Western culture. Those committed to a ‘progress narrative’ find themselves troubled by the apparent inability of human beings to eliminate suffering – a problem made worse by the development of technology deliberately designed to cause pain and death – such as napalm and designer pathogens. Those committed to a ‘Christian narrative’ experience at least some degree of intellectual discomfort. If God is good or perfect, surely the creation ought to be better than this?

Darwin's theory of natural selection raised many questions for religious thought, including the critically important matter of the status of humanity within the natural order as a whole. Yet Darwin himself was acutely aware of the problem of the wastefulness of the evolutionary process, and the suffering that it presupposed. His letter to Asa Gray of May 1860 makes this point with considerable force:

But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the [Ichneumon wasp] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.

Darwin's model of evolution envisages the emergence of the animal kingdom as taking place over a vastly extended period of time, involving suffering and apparent wastage that go far beyond the concerns of traditional approaches to theodicy. As the Oxford theologian Bethany Sollereder points out in a series of recent important interventions, human beings were not in any way involved in such suffering, in that the gratuitous suffering we observe in the natural world precedes human existence by hundreds of millions of years. Darwin's theory of evolution can be seen to intensify an existing problem, by highlighting the extent of suffering over the period of evolutionary history. The issue of theodicy – the offering of an explanation or justification of the existence of pain and suffering in a world created by God – thus became increasingly important.

It is important to avoid framing such discussions in terms of ‘natural evil’. The judgement that any natural process is ‘evil’ is unsustainable from an evolutionary point of view. Such a moral evaluation is not based on natural criteria, but on the imposition of a human moral framework. We may consider that the shifting of a tectonic plate is ‘evil’, in the light of our perception of its implications. Yet the shifting of tectonic plates is just natural. The additional judgement that it is, or leads to, evil cannot be defended from a scientific perspective. It is only because we observe nature through a particular moral lens that we can speak of natural suffering being ‘evil’.

It is, however, perfectly proper to ask why suffering and pain seem to be an inbuilt aspect of the natural world and reflect on their religious significance. William Paley was aware of the existence of suffering and pain in nature, and believed that their existence could be satisfactorily accommodated within the notion of the divine ‘contrivance’ of the world. Pain within the natural world might be held to represent ‘a defect in the contrivance: but it is not the object of it’. Creation is thus held to reflect God's benevolent purposes, even where these are imperfectly executed.

One of the most important recent discussions of the problem of suffering in evolutionary perspectives is due to the British theologian Christopher Southgate. In his Groaning of Creation (2008), Southgate sets out to offer a theologically rigorous engagement with the problem of suffering in evolution. Rightly recognizing the severe limitations of non‐Trinitarian approaches to the question, such as process thought, Southgate develops an approach based on the Pauline motif of the ‘groaning of creation’ (Romans 8). Southgate's concern to remain faithful to core themes of the Christian tradition also leads him to reject the approach of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who held that God used ‘evolutionary centration’ to bring about a convergence upon a glorious, God‐centred final culmination of evolution. For Southgate, the biblical theme of ‘the mighty redeeming act of God inaugurated in the Cross of Christ’ seems to offer a much more theologically secure foundation for such reflections.

The problem of evolutionary suffering is thus seen through a theological lens shaped by most of the leading themes of a Trinitarian view of reality – such as the notion of creation ex nihilo and the final consummation, yet specifically excluding the notion of an historical fall, as traditionally interpreted. Southgate's Trinitarian theology of creation extends to include the notion that God's self‐emptying love is expressed in incarnational kenosis. His approach weaves together the following five themes:

Southgate's approach is rich in insights. One example is the dialectic between disvalue and value within the evolutionary process, which pits the disvalue of the suffering of individual animals on the one hand against the value of the survival of their species that this suffering helps to make possible on the other. It is a point made earlier by the environmental ethicist Holmes Rolston, who argues that processes which are intrinsic to the evolutionary process can indeed give rise to pain and suffering, but can also be instrumental in enhancing values, by giving rise to new forms of existence. Rolston expresses this general point using an often‐quoted aphorism: ‘The cougar's fang sharpens the deer's sight, the deer's fleet‐footedness shapes a more supple lioness.’

Similar points are made by the Oxford theologian Bethany Sollereder, who notes that God's intention is not evil or suffering, but rather to make possible new and better forms of existence within the evolutionary process. Picking up on Darwin's concerns about the Ichneumon wasp, she offers an alternative theological reading of this observation.

God did not design the parasitic Ichneumon wasp to lay eggs within a living host, but God's love created an open field of possibilities in which the Ichneumon would have the freedom to develop that survival technique as it pursued its desires.

In general, three distinct themes have emerged as characteristic of recent Christian reflections on the apologetic concerns arising from evolutionary suffering, whether woven together into a coherent tapestry, or asserted individually as significant in their own right.

The three glories form … a triptych with an eschatological perspective, the creation as it will be in its transformed state. Gloria mundi, what the not‐yet‐completely redeemed world discloses of its creator, must be appropriated and understood in the context of Gloria crucis, of all we see of God in the Passion of Christ – and this in turn opens up and is informed by what one might term Gloria in excelsis, the eschatological song of the new creation, in which creaturely flourishing will be attained without creaturely struggle.

Theology: Transhumanism, the ‘Image of God’, and Human Identity

Classic forms of humanism, expressed in works such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man, emphasized the beauty and elegance of human nature, taking delight in the complexity of the human body and the range of human achievements. More recently, however, schools of thought have emerged which see human nature as a ‘work‐in‐progress, a half‐baked beginning that we can learn to remould in desirable ways’. The term ‘transhumanism’ was coined by Julian Huxley in 1957 to designate the view that science could enable humans to transcend their present limits and thus to fulfil their ultimate potential. The related term ‘Posthuman’ has come to be used to refer to what humans might become if transhumanist objectives were achieved.

The ‘transhumanist’ movement advocates fundamentally improving the human condition through technology, thus eliminating ageing and enhancing human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. Technological enhancement, it is argued, will enable human beings to transcend their biological limits. An example of this kind of technological enhancement is the future development of artificial red blood cells, capable of transporting oxygen and carbon dioxide more efficiently in human blood. These artificial cells would not be limited by the materials and pressures that arise naturally, thus enabling a performance far beyond the range of natural red blood cells.

Some will see this intervention in human as ‘playing at being God’. However, it is fair to point out that human beings already depend extensively on scientific interventions – such as drugs and surgery – to promote the quality and extend the range of life. The real question is whether transhumanism represents an extension of existing practices or a new approach altogether, one which is moving us into unfamiliar and disturbing ethical and social territory.

Transhumanists often assume that technological augmentation of natural human cognitive capacities will lead to moral excellence, in effect regarding selfishness and our innate tendencies towards destructive patterns of thought and action as arising from our present cognitive limits that can be remedied by boosting our cognitive capacities. It's an interesting suggestion.

Yet some would argue that this development is ambivalent and might lead to deeper problems emerging. Nick Bostrom, one of the most significant and influential transhumanist philosophers, rightly queries any simplistic equation of technological advances with the notion of progress itself.

It may be tempting to refer to the expansion of technological capacities as ‘progress’. But this term has evaluative connotations – of things getting better – and it is far from a conceptual truth that expansion of technological capabilities makes things go better.

Bostrom here alludes to concerns raised in the 1960s by Victor Ferkiss. What if these enhancements led to a technological dystopia? Like most accounts of the shape of the future dating from the 1950s and 1960s, Ferkiss's projections of the human future seem a little naïve today; yet his real interest lies not in predicting the future direction of technology, but whether human beings have the moral character and capacity for wisdom to cope with these new developments in their abilities.

What if the new man combines the animal irrationality of primitive man with the calculated greed and power‐lust of industrial man, while possessing the God‐like powers granted him by technology? This would be the ultimate horror.

Some Christian writers such as the Lutheran theologian Ted Peters are concerned that secular transhumanists do not take the sinfulness of human nature seriously enough, and are insufficiently alert to the fragility of the human vision of morality.

The rise and development of transhumanism raises some fundamental questions about human nature, some of which are clearly religious in nature. In the case of Christianity, human identity and distinctiveness is partly framed in terms of humanity bearing the ‘image of God’ (Genesis 1:26–27). This notion is not elaborated elsewhere in the biblical texts, which means that there is some debate about what this concept actually means and what its implications might be. For our purposes in this section, the question is whether allowing or imposing a radical change in human nature compromises human identity as creatures made in the image of God?

A central question here is whether the theological notion of being created in the ‘image of God’ implies fixity of human identity, or whether it creates the possibility of human transformation through the exercise of the faculties that are understood to be part of the created human endowment. Few, however, have suggested that physical, cultural, or mental alterations to the human person amount to the violation of something sacred. To explore this further, we shall consider four main understandings of the notion of the ‘image of God’ which have emerged during the development of Christian theology.

So how does this broad concept of bearing the ‘image of God’ play into reflections on the relation of human technological enhancement and religious approaches to human identity? In what follows, we shall consider the approaches of two Lutheran theologians with particular interests in the field of science and religion: Philip Hefner, Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and former Director of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science, and Ted Peters, Professor of Systematic Theology at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary (Berkeley, California).

In his influential work The Human Factor (1993), Philip Hefner sets out the basis of a Christian anthropology rooted in the idea of the human being as a ‘created co‐creator’. For Hefner, a viable contemporary theory of the human person must be grounded in the notion of a God who creates humans as co‐creators. God did not merely bestow on human beings, but called and empowered them to choose and create their own freedom. The process of natural selection contained within itself from the outset the potential for the future freedom of creation, and the arrival of humanity represents the point at which creation can be said to have chosen to be free.

Ted Peters develops this concept further, particularly through his ‘proleptic’ view of theology. Peters argues that nature is to be seen God's creatio continua. Creation is both an event and a process so that the process of creation is still taking place today. In developing this point, Peters makes a distinction between two ways of understanding ‘creation’: ‘archonic’ creation, in which everything is created at the very beginning and moves towards its final predetermined goal, and ‘epigenesis’, in which the process of creation has the capacity for genuine novelty, leading to an open – rather than a predetermined – future. Humanity is involved in this process of shaping the future of creation – including its own. Peters thus suggests that we become more human by joining in the work of Christ within the evolutionary process, and thus growing into the likeness of God.

Technology clearly has a role to play in this process of development and enhancement. Hefner, for example, argues that God has endowed us with a capacity and yearning for self‐transcendence, in that we are able to imagine new futures and enact them. Both Hefner and Peters, however, are aware of how technology can be abused. Hefner recognizes the importance of acknowledging the fallen aspect of human nature, and the impact this has on human moral capacities and the goals of their aspirations. Human creative processes are not always aligned with God's purposes, so that human cultural attitudes and technological capacity have been instrumental in bringing the planet to a point of crisis. The human capacity for creativity is only one aspect or element of the ‘image of God’; this idea also enfolds living and acting in accordance with the purposes of God as these are disclosed and embodied in Christ.

While both Hefner and Peters express concerns about aspects of transhumanism, their understanding of the ‘image of God’ creates space for Christianity and transhumanism to converge at points, particularly in their view that humanity needs to move towards the future, using creativity to improve creation and the human condition – but nevertheless remaining human in doing so.

Mathematics: Science and the Language of God

The universe is something that we can partially understand and represent mathematically. This insight is fundamental to the natural sciences. Yet in many ways, it is a surprising result. Not only is the universe governed by laws; these laws are comprehensible to us. As the philosopher Roger Scruton remarks, the idea that a universe, left to its own devices, will ‘produce conscious beings, able to look for the reason and the meaning of things’ is quite remarkable, and demands some kind of reasoned explanation. John Polkinghorne, a British theoretical physicist noted for his work on quantum theory, is one of many to stress both the curiosity of this observation, and its potential implications. Scientists are so familiar with being able to understand the world that most of the time they take this for granted. After all, it is what makes science possible. Yet, Polkinghorne points out, things could have been very different. ‘The universe might have been a disorderly chaos rather than an orderly cosmos. Or it might have had a rationality which was inaccessible to us.’

What is particularly puzzling is why the deep structures of the universe can be represented mathematically. How could the great untamable ocean of the universe be represented in the calm, shallow pool of mathematics? This point was made in a classic essay by the theoretical physicist and Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner, entitled ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics’. One of its closing sentences highlights the implications of this ‘miracle’ – namely, the ‘appropriateness of the language of mathematics to the formulation of the laws of physics’. For Wigner, this is a ‘wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve’, a mystery that called out for an explanation.

When scientists try to make sense of the complexities of our world, they use mathematics as their torch. Sometimes abstract mathematical theories that were originally developed without any practical application in mind later turn out to be powerfully predictive physical models. Yet our familiarity with this fact has blunted our awareness that this is actually rather strange. For Polkinghorne, it was deeply puzzling that there was such a significant ‘congruence between our minds and the universe’. Why does mathematics (a rationality we experience within ourselves) correspond so closely to the deep structures of the universe (a rationality observed beyond ourselves). So what explanations might be offered for this strange observation?

One possibility is that this might be an extraordinary piece of good luck – even a miracle. Why should mathematics, the outcome of a free exploration of the human mind, bear any relation to the structure of the physical world around us? Now some might suggest that we could leave it there. It works, and that's all we need to know. Most, however, will feel that this mystery calls out for an explanation. As Albert Einstein once remarked: ‘The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.’ Einstein believed that while the question of the intelligibility of the world was raised by science, it went far beyond science's unaided ability to answer.

This is a good example of the difficulty noted by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who correctly pointed out that the meaning of a system will not be found within the system itself. Science is very good at raising profound questions, the answers to which turn out to lie beyond the scope of the scientific method. So is there what Eugene Wigner himself called ‘a picture which is a consistent fusion into a single unit of the little pictures’, which can accommodate this observation?

Some would dispute that there is anything to explain. They would argue that the role of mathematics in basic physical theory is simply organizational, in that we impose meaning and structure on the world. There is thus no particular mathematical order within the universe itself. The human mind likes to organize things, leading us to impose our own ordering on reality by casting a mathematical net over it. This net creates and imposes order, but the order is invented, not real.

Yet as Roger Penrose and others have noted, this notion of the imposition of an invented order fails to explain the extraordinary precision in the agreement between the best physical theories that we have come across and the behaviour of our material universe at its most fundamental levels. Penrose points to Einstein's general theory of relativity, which improves even upon the already amazingly accurate Newtonian theory of gravity. Newton's theory was precise to something like one part in 100 in describing the behaviour of the solar system. Yet Einstein's theory is not merely much more accurate; it also predicts completely new effects, such as black holes and gravitational waves.

Our minds can develop theories which do not simply explain what is already known, but can predict things we have not yet discovered. This is a particularly important point when viewed in the light of the kinds of metaphysical Darwinism which writers such as Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins find so persuasive. Dennett argues that human thought – including our morality and religion – is shaped by our evolutionary past. Without realizing it, we are the prisoners of our genetic history, locked into ways of thinking that were moulded by our need to survive. Dennett sees Darwinism as a ‘universal acid’, a naturalist philosophy which corrodes religion and ethics, exposing them as relics from a past, which have no ongoing place in the present. Dennett's critics, of course, have pointed out that this has rather negative implications for philosophy as well. If human rationality is grounded in our evolutionary past, why rely on it philosophically?

If Dennett's inflated Darwinian narrative is right, the human mind evolved in response to the need for survival. So what reason is there for thinking that it can acquire a deep knowledge of reality – such as the fundamental structure of the universe – when all that is needed in order for humans to reproduce their genes is to avoid making fatal errors too often? There is no convincing evolutionary reason for our ability to develop the rich and complex mathematical theories of our day, to speculate about the origins of the universe, or to be able to represent the deep structures of reality mathematically.

During the seventeenth century, many leading scientists began to think of mathematics as a ‘natural language’ or the ‘language of nature’. The idea can be seen clearly in the writings of Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), who regarded geometry as the archetype of the cosmos, co‐eternal with God as its creator. In his work Harmonices Mundi (‘Harmonies of the World’, 1619), Kepler argued that, since geometry had its origins in the mind of God, it was only to be expected that the created order would conform to its patterns:

In that geometry is part of the divine mind from the origins of time, even from before the origins of time (for what is there in God that is not also from God?) has provided God with the patterns for the creation of the world, and has been transferred to humanity with the image of God.

A similar theme is found in the writings of Galileo, who spoke of the universe as a book written using the language of mathematics:

Philosophy is written in that great book which stands open continually before our eyes (I am talking about the Universe); but it cannot be understood without learning how to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.

The growing trend towards the ‘mathematization of nature’, evident in this passage, reflects this belief that mathematics is the language in which the ‘book of nature’ is written.

Many leading scientists of the Renaissance saw theology as offering an imaginative template that enabled them to make sense of the world. In particular, they considered the notion of humanity bearing the ‘image of God’ had important epistemic outcomes, including a propensity or capacity to discern God within creation. The biblical idea of the ‘image of God’ was developed in significant manners within the Christian theological tradition, which often conceived it as a rational or imaginative template pointing to a theistic explanation of the world.

A similar view was taken by the great Victorian empirical philosopher William Whewell, whose inductive scientific method reflected his belief that the ‘Fundamental Ideas’ which we use to organize our sciences resemble the ideas used by God in the creation of the physical universe. For Whewell, God has created our minds such that they contain these ideas (or their ‘germs’), so that ‘they can and must agree with the world’.

The capacity of a theory – a way of seeing things – to ‘fit things in’, to show that they are an interconnected part of a greater whole, is widely agreed to be an indication of its truth. Now this does not amount to a proof of such a theory, in the strict logical or mathematical sense of the term. Yet one of the most fundamental issues in scientific explanation is whether an observation can be satisfactorily accommodated within a certain way of thinking. Now this doesn’t prove that a theistic lens is right. After all, various forms of Platonism also offer a framework for explaining this remarkable, even magical, capacity of mathematics to map the deepest structures of the human mind. Perhaps it's not surprising that it is frequently considered the default metaphysical position for mathematicians. Yet every scientist knows that there are multiple theoretical interpretations of every observation. There are lots of possible explanations; the question is which of these is to be seen as the best. For many, the idea of God remains one of the simplest, most elegant, and most satisfying ways of seeing our world and understanding the place of mathematics within it.

Physics: Does the ‘Anthropic Principle’ have Religious Significance?

It is generally thought that modern physics and cosmology offer some of the most important and fruitful possibilities for dialogue between the sciences and religion. In this section, we shall focus on two interconnected issues of relevance: the ‘big bang’ and the so‐called ‘anthropic principle’. We shall consider these in what follows.

As we saw earlier in this work, it is now widely agreed that the universe had a beginning. This immediately points to at least some level of affinity or consonance with the Christian idea that the universe was created. While recognizing that the universe had a ‘beginning’ does not necessarily imply that it was ‘created’, a large number of writers, such as the Hungarian philosopher and priest Stanley L. Jaki, have argued that this is the most obvious implication of the notion of origination. One of the factors which has been of particular importance in focusing this debate has been the ‘anthropic principle’, to which we now turn.

The term ‘anthropic principle’ is used in a variety of ways by different writers; nevertheless, the term is generally used to refer to the remarkable degree of ‘fine‐tuning’ observed within the natural order. The American physicist Paul Davies argues that the remarkable convergence of certain fundamental constants is laden with religious significance. ‘The seemingly miraculous concurrence of numerical values that nature has assigned to her fundamental constants must remain the most compelling evidence for an element of cosmic design.’

The most accessible introduction to the anthropic principle is widely agreed to be the 1986 study of John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, entitled The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. The basic observation which underlies the principle may be stated as follows:

One of the most important results of twentieth‐century physics has been the gradual realization that there exist invariant properties of the natural world and its elementary components which render the gross size and structure of virtually all its constituents quite inevitable. The size of stars and planets, and even people, are neither random nor the result of any Darwinian selection process from a myriad of possibilities. These, and other gross features of the Universe are the consequences of necessity; they are manifestations of the possible equilibrium states between competing forces of attraction and repulsion. The intrinsic strengths of these controlling forces of Nature are determined by a mysterious collection of pure numbers that we call the constants of Nature.

The importance of this point was brought out in an important review article published in 1979 in the leading British scientific journal Nature by B. J. Carr and M. J. Rees. Carr and Rees pointed out how most natural scales – in particular, the mass and length scales – are determined by a few physical constants. They concluded that: ‘The possibility of life as we know it evolving in the Universe depends on the values of a few physical constants – and is in some respects remarkably sensitive to their numerical values.’ The constants which assumed a particularly significant role were the electromagnetic fine structure constant, the gravitational fine structure constant, and the electron‐to‐proton mass ratio.

Examples of the ‘fine‐tuning’ of fundamental cosmological constants include the following:

The significance of this evidence of ‘fine‐tuning’ has been the subject of considerable discussion among scientists, philosophers, and theologians. There is no doubt that these coincidences are immensely interesting and thought‐provoking, leading at least some natural scientists to posit a possible religious explanation for these observations. ‘As we look out into the Universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming’ (Freeman Dyson). It must be stressed, however, that Dyson's view does not command universal assent within the scientific community, despite its obvious attractions to a significant subset of that community which endorses the notion of a creator God.

It is certainly true that the anthropic principle, whether stated in a weak or strong form, is strongly consistent with a theistic perspective. A theist (for example, a Christian) with a firm commitment to a doctrine of creation will find the ‘fine‐tuning’ of the universe to be an anticipated and pleasant confirmation of his religious beliefs. This would not constitute a proof of the existence of God, but would be an important element in a cumulative series of considerations which is at the very least consistent with the existence of a creator God. This is the kind of argument set forth by F. R. Tennant (1886–1957) in his important study Philosophical Theology (1930), which many believe used the term ‘anthropic’ for the first time to designate this specific type of teleological argument:

The forcibleness of Nature's suggestion that she is the outcome of intelligent design lies not in particular cases of adaptedness in the world, nor even in the multiplicity of them … [but] consists rather in the conspiration of innumerable causes to produce, either by united or reciprocal action, and to maintain, a general order of Nature. Narrower kinds of teleological arguments, based on surveys of restricted spheres of fact, are much more precarious than that for which the name of ‘the wider teleology’ may be appropriated in that the comprehensive design‐argument is the outcome of synopsis or conspection of the knowable world.

This does not mean that the factors noted above constitute irrefutable evidence for the existence or character of a creator God; few religious thinkers would suggest that this is the case. What would be affirmed, however, is that they are consistent with a theistic worldview; that they can be accommodated with the greatest of ease within such a worldview; that they reinforce the plausibility of such a worldview for those who are already committed to one; and that they offer apologetic possibilities for those who do not yet hold a theistic position.

But what of those who do not hold a religious viewpoint? What status might the ‘anthropic principle’ have in relation to the long‐standing debate about the existence and nature of God, or the divine design of the universe? Peter Atkins, a physical chemist with stridently anti‐religious views, notes that the ‘fine‐tuning’ of the world may appear to be miraculous; however, he argues that, on closer inspection, a purely naturalist explanation may be offered.

And what of the notion of the ‘multiverse’? This debate continues, with no obvious sign of resolution. The crux of the debate is whether there exists a singular universe, or a multiplicity of universes. The possibility of multiple universes comes from the idea of an inflationary universe, first proposed by Alan Guth in 1981. One way of making theoretical sense of the observed properties of the universe is to suggest that it underwent massive inflation in the first instant – less than a trillionth of a second – of its existence. This involved the emergence of a multiplicity of universes.

On this approach, we happen to live in a universe with biologically friendly properties. We do not inhabit or observe other universes, where these conditions do not pertain. Our insights are restricted by observation selection effects, which means that our location within a biophilic universe inclines us to propose that the entire cosmos possesses such properties, when in fact other universes will exist which are inimical to life. Indeed, some argue that such biophobic universes are predicted to be the norm. We happen to exist in an exceptional universe, and we have generalized from its properties. Our universe may possess anthropic properties. But others do not. The debate will continue, and its outcome is uncertain.

Evolutionary Biology: Can we speak of ‘Design’ in Nature?

One of the most interesting debates in contemporary evolutionary biology concerns the notion of ‘teleology’. This word, which derives from the Greek word telos (‘goal’ or ‘objective’), is usually interpreted to mean something like ‘a theory that a process is directed towards a specific goal our outcome’. This idea underlies William Paley's celebrated Natural Theology (1802), which argues that nature demonstrates certain features which indicate that it has been ‘contrived’ – that is, designed and constructed – by God in the light of certain very specific ends or goals.

It is an idea that remains attractive. The philosopher Henri Bergson and the evolutionary palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin both developed philosophies of life which were founded on the acceptance of biological evolution while interpreting this as having some kind of purpose or goal. In this section, we shall consider why the idea of teleology in biology has become so controversial, and why it has significant religious implications.

Earlier in this work, we considered the basic features of the neo‐Darwinian understanding of evolution. This approach combines Charles Darwin's emphasis upon the role of natural selection and Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics. One of the most discussed aspects of this approach to evolution is its implicit rejection of any ‘purpose’ to the evolutionary process. It may have direction; it does not, however, have a goal. This clearly raises a number of significant issues.

In his influential and widely discussed book The Blind Watchmaker (1986), the atheist zoologist Richard Dawkins deals with the appearance of design within the world, which has led many to draw religious conclusions. For Dawkins, while these conclusions may be understandable, they remain mistaken and unfounded.

This [appearance of design] is probably the most important reason for the belief, held by the vast majority of people that have ever lived, in some kind of supernatural deity. It took a very great leap of the imagination for Darwin and Wallace to see that, contrary to all intuition, there is another way and, once you have understood it, a far more plausible way, for complex ‘design’ to arise out of primeval simplicity.

As we saw earlier, the title of Dawkin's work is inspired by an analogy used by William Paley, one of the more noted advocates of the ‘argument from design’. Paley argues that the world is like a watch, which shows evidence of design and construction (see 103–8). Just as the existence of a watch points to a watchmaker, so the appearance of design in nature (evident, for example, in the human eye) points to a designer. Dawkins, while appreciating Paley's imagery, regards it as fatally flawed. The whole idea of ‘design’ or ‘purpose’ is out of place.

Paley drives his point home with beautiful and reverent descriptions of the dissected machinery of life, beginning with the human eye … Paley's argument is made with passionate sincerity and is informed by the best biological scholarship of his day, but it is wrong, gloriously and utterly wrong …. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

The process of natural selection is thus seen as unguided and undirected, ‘selecting’ only in the sense that certain natural forces tend to lead to the failure of certain species to establish themselves in the face of intense competition with other species, fighting for existence in the same environment.

This strongly anti‐teleological tone can be found in a number of earlier works by noted molecular biologists, perhaps most significantly Jacques Monod (1910–1976) in his book Chance and Necessity (1971). Monod here argued that evolutionary change took place by chance and was perpetuated by necessity. The term ‘teleonomy’ was introduced into biological use in 1958 by the Princeton biologist C. S. Pittendrigh (1918–1996) in order to emphasize that ‘recognition and description of end‐directedness’ does not carry any commitment to a teleology. This idea was developed further by Monod, who argued that teleonomy had displaced teleology in evolutionary biology. In using this term, Monod wished to highlight that evolutionary biology was concerned with identifying and clarifying the mechanisms underlying the evolutionary process. While the mechanisms which governed evolution were of interest, they had no goal. It is thus not possible to speak meaningfully of ‘purpose’ within evolution.

Or is it? The biologist and philosopher Francisco Ayala (born 1934) argues that some notion of teleological explanation is actually fundamental to modern biology. It is required to account for the familiar functional roles played by parts of living organisms, and to describe the goal of reproductive fitness which plays such a central role in accounts of natural selection.

A teleological explanation implies that the system under consideration is directively organized. For that reason, teleological explanations are appropriate in biology and in the domain of cybernetics but make no sense when used in the physical sciences to describe phenomena like the fall of a stone. Moreover, and most importantly, teleological explanations imply that the end result is the explanatory reason for the existence of the object or process which serves or leads to it. A teleological account of the gills of fish implies that gills came to existence precisely because they serve for respiration. If the above reasoning is correct, the use of teleological explanations in biology is not only acceptable but indeed indispensable.

Natural selection itself, the ultimate source of explanation in biology, is thus for Ayala a teleological process for two reasons. First, because it is directed to the goal of increasing reproductive efficiency; and second, because it produces the goal‐directed organs and processes required for this.

Ernst Mayr (1904–2005), widely credited with inventing the modern philosophy of biology, especially of evolutionary biology, sets out four traditional objections to the use of teleological language in biology.

As Mayr points out, as a result of these and other objections, teleological explanations in biology were widely believed to be ‘a form of obscurantism’. Yet paradoxically, biologists continue to use teleological language, insisting that it is methodologically and heuristically appropriate and helpful.

Yet, as Mayr rightly observes, nature abounds in processes and activities that lead to an end or goal. However we choose to interpret them, examples of goal‐directed behaviour are widespread in the natural world; indeed, ‘the occurrence of goal‐directed processes is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the world of living systems.’ The evasion of teleological statements through their restatement in non‐teleological forms invariably leads to ‘meaningless platitudes’. Although surrounding his conclusion with a thicket of qualifications, Mayr insists that it is appropriate to conclude that ‘the use of so‐called “teleological” language by biologists is legitimate; it neither implies a rejection of physicochemical explanation nor does it imply noncausal explanation.’

There is no doubt that serious objections may be, and have been, raised about the notion of evolution as a conscious agent, actively planning its goals and outcomes, or drawn to a preordained goal by some mysterious force. Yet it must be pointed out that such anthropomorphic ways of speaking (and thinking) are evident in some sections of contemporary biology. An excellent example is provided by the ‘gene's‐eye’ view of evolution, popularized by Richard Dawkins, which entails envisaging the gene as an active agent. While rightly cautioning that ‘we must not think of genes as conscious, purposeful agents’, Dawkins goes on to argue that the process of natural selection ‘makes them behave rather as if they were purposeful’. This anthropomorphic way of speaking involves the attribution of both agency and intentionality to an entity which is ultimately a passive participant in the process of replication, rather than its active director.

The question of directionality in the evolutionary process was reopened in 2003 by the Cambridge evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris (born 1951). In his book Life's Solution, Conway Morris argues that the number of evolutionary endpoints is limited. ‘Rerun the tape of life as often as you like, and the end result will be much the same.’ Life's Solution builds a forceful case for the predictability of evolutionary outcomes. Conway Morris's case is based on the phenomenon of convergent evolution, in which two or more lineages have independently evolved similar structures and functions. Conway Morris's examples range from the aerodynamics of hovering moths and hummingbirds to the use of silk by spiders and some insects to capture prey.

Evolution regularly appears to ‘converge’ on a relatively small number of possible outcomes. Convergence is widespread, despite the infinitude of genetic possibilities, because ‘the evolutionary routes are many, but the destinations are limited’. Certain destinations are precluded by ‘the howling wildernesses of the maladaptive’. Biological history shows a marked tendency to repeat itself, with life demonstrating an almost eerie ability to find its way to the correct solution, repeatedly. ‘Life has a peculiar propensity to “navigate” to rather precise solutions in response to adaptive challenges.’

In making this important point, Conway Morris offers a non‐biological analogy to help his readers grasp his point. He appeals to the discovery of Easter Island by the Polynesians, perhaps 1,200 years ago. Easter Island is one of the most remote places on earth, at least 3,000 kilometres from the nearest population centres, Tahiti and Chile. Yet though surrounded by the vast, empty wastes of the Pacific Ocean, it was nevertheless discovered by Polynesians. Is this, asks Conway Morris, to be put down to chance and happenstance? Possibly. But probably not. Conway Morris points to the ‘sophisticated search strategy of the Polynesians’ which made its discovery inevitable. The same, he argues, happens in the evolutionary process: ‘Isolated “islands” provide havens of biological possibility in an ocean of maladaptedness.’ These ‘islands of stability’ give rise to the phenomenon of convergent evolution.

So what is the theological significance of these reflections? Most of the traditional objections to the appeal to the notion of teleology in biology noted by Mayr reflect a belief that an a priori metaphysical system, often theistic, is imposed upon the process of scientific observation and reflection, thus prejudicing its scientific character. From the standpoint of the scientific method, one may indeed protest against the imposition of a priori notions of goals and causes, such as those associated with many traditional approaches to teleology. The natural sciences rightly protest about the smuggling of preconceived teleological schemes into scientific analysis. But what if they arise from the process of reflection on observation? What if they are a posteriori inferences, rather than dogmatic a priori assumptions? Conway Morris's analysis suggests that a form of teleology may indeed be inferred a posteriori, as the ‘best explanation’ of what is observed. This may not directly map onto a traditional Christian doctrine of providence; nevertheless, there is some conceptual overlap and resonance.

This is not necessarily, it should be noted, a matter of discerning ‘purpose’ – a heavily metaphysically freighted notion – within the evolutionary sequence and inferring from this to that God exists. If anything, this amounts to affirming a resonance between religious theory and observation, similar to that affirmed in John Henry Newman's remark: ‘I believe in design because I believe in God; not in God because I see design.’ Furthermore, the notion of ‘create’ need not be interpreted as a single, once‐for‐all event, but can equally – and many would now say rightly – be understood as a directed process. This is the view of creation that was set out by Augustine of Hippo (354–430), who spoke of God creating a world with an inbuilt capacity to develop and evolve. A similar point was made by the English churchman Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) in 1871: ‘We knew of old that God was so wise that He could make all things: but behold, He is so much wiser than even that, that He can make all things make themselves.’ Once more, it is clear that we are dealing with a debate that has a long way still to run.

The Psychology of Religion: What is Religion All About?

The psychology of religion is becoming an increasingly important field, not least because of a series of recent empirical studies suggesting that religious belief might play a significant positive role in relation to wellbeing. The discipline traditionally explores such questions as how religious faith develops and matures, ways in which religious faith can be benevolent or harmful, the different religious responses associated with various personality types, and the brain mechanisms underlying religious experience.

The psychological study of religion has encountered some resistance within religious communities, mainly on account of a concern that psychology aims for explanatory reductionism – in other words, that religious beliefs will be reduced to, or explained away as, psychology. There is no doubt that some such agenda can be seen in some strongly reductionist approaches to religion – such as that of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), which we shall consider below. However, this is not necessarily the case. Many psychologists, including William James (1842–1910), treat religion as a phenomenon with its own integrity and distinctive features, which are to be acknowledged and respected. Where Freud was convinced that the origins of religious belief lay in certain deep‐rooted delusions, James offered a more appreciative and positive approach to religion.

It may also be noted that psychology and religion can be seen as offering different levels of explanation. It is certainly possible to argue that some aspects of human cognitive processes may help explain how religious ideas are generated or sustained. Yet as the psychologist Fraser Watts points out, it is necessary to recognize a multiplicity of causes in such areas. Some scientists have fallen into the habit of asking: ‘What caused A? Was it X or Y?’ But in the human sciences, multiple causes are the norm. For example, consider the question ‘Is depression caused by physical or social factors?’ The answer is that it is caused by both. As Watts points out, the history of such research ‘ought to make us wary of asking whether an apparent revelation of God really is such, or whether it has some other natural explanation, in terms of people's thought processes or brain processes.’ To put it crudely, God, human brain processes, the cultural context, and psychological processes may all be causal factors in human religious experience.

In what follows, we shall explore some psychological approaches to religion, and note their importance for our theme. We shall focus on the two of the most important and interesting writers in this field – William James and Sigmund Freud.

William James studied at Harvard University, where he subsequently became professor of psychology (1887–1897) and then philosophy (1897–1907). His most influential work was based on his Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh University, which were published under the title The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). In this landmark study, James drew extensively on a wide range of published works and personal testimonies, engaging with religious experience on its own terms, and taking accounts of such experiences at face value. James's discussion of mysticism identifies four characteristics of these religious experiences.

While James notes that the second two characteristics are ‘less marked’ than the others, he considers them to be integral to any phenomenology of religious experience.

Although other writers, such as F. D. E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834), had addressed the issue of religious experience before him, James brought to his task a more rigorously empirical and analytical way of thinking. Yet James is aware that experience is a private matter, which is not easily open to public description. James's pioneering effort to construct an empirical study of the phenomenon of religious experience is still widely regarded as an authoritative, balanced, and finely observed study of religious experience.

James makes it clear that his primary interest is personal religious experience, rather than the type of religious experiences which are associated with institutions. ‘In critically judging of the value of religious phenomena, it is very important to insist on the distinction between religion as an individual personal function, and religion as an institutional, corporate or tribal product.’ So what is it about ‘experiences’ which determine whether they are religious or not? James answers this critically important question by asserting that religious experience is distinguished qualitatively from other modes of experience: ‘The essence of religious experiences, the thing by which we finally must judge them, must be that element or quality in them which we can meet nowhere else.’ James regards religious experience as imparting a new quality to life. He speaks of religious experience raising ‘our centre of personal energy’, and giving rise to ‘regenerative effects unattainable in other ways’. God is to be conceived of as ‘the deepest power in the universe’ who can be ‘conceived under the form of a mental personality’.

The Varieties of Religious Experience is often seen as establishing the science of the psychology of religion. While clearly lacking the analytical rigour which some might now expect, James's masterpiece is based on two fundamental principles. First, that an experience of ‘God’ or ‘the divine’ is existentially transformative, leading to the renewal or regeneration of individuals. Second, that any attempt to codify or formulate these experiences will fail to do justice to them. A number of intellectual responses are certainly possible; none of them, however, is adequate.

So what is the wider significance of James for science and religion? One major theme to emerge from his study is that organized religion has relatively little to offer those interested in religious experience. It trades in ‘second‐hand’ experience, where what needs to be studied is fresh and vital, often being perceived as a threat to the settled ways of organized religion:

A genuine first‐hand religious experience … is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it still proves contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over; the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn.

This suggests that empirical study of religious experience is best carried on outside the sphere of organized religion – an assertion which has had considerable impact on the scientific study of the phenomenon of religious experience. Subsequent empirical studies have not provided substantiation of this suggestion; nevertheless, it is important to appreciate that James's approach was an important stimulus to work in this area.

One of the most significant aspects of James's work is that it does not attempt to reduce religious experience to social or psychological categories, but attempts to describe the phenomena in a manner which respects their integrity. This heightens the contrast between James and Freud, to whom we now turn.

It is widely agreed that Sigmund Freud's discussion of religion is one of his most significant contributions to the debate on science and religion. As we noted earlier (31–2), Freud spoke of three great ‘narcissistic wounds’ inflicted on human self‐esteem by scientific advance. The Copernican revolution demolished the notion that human beings stood at the centre of the universe. Charles Darwin demonstrated that humanity did not even have a unique place on the planet earth, being the outcome of a natural process. The third wound, Freud declared, was his own demonstration that human beings were not even the master of their own destiny. They were imprisoned and moulded by hidden psychological forces, located in the human unconscious.

Freud developed the idea of humanity being the prisoner of its own inner demons by arguing that religion could be accounted for psychoanalytically. Religion is a human creation, the result of an obsession with ritual and veneration of a father figure. Freud's account of the ‘psychogenesis of religion’ was totally unsympathetic in tone, lacked rigorous empirical evidential foundations, and was strongly reductionist in approach. Totem and Taboo (1913) considers how religion has its origins in society in general; The Future of an Illusion (1927) deals with the psychological origins (Freud often uses the term ‘psychogenesis’ here) of religion in the individual. For Freud, religious ideas are ‘illusions, fulfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind’. Similar ideas were developed in a later work Moses and Monotheism (1939), published at the end of his life.

To understand Freud at this point, we need to examine his theory of repression. These views were first made generally known in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), a book which was generally ignored by the critics and the general reading public. Freud's thesis here is that dreams are wish‐fulfilments. They are disguised fulfilments of wishes that are repressed by the consciousness (the ego), and are thus displaced into the unconsciousness. In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1904), Freud argued that these repressed wishes intrude into everyday life at a number of points. Certain neurotic symptoms, dreams, or even small slips of the tongue or pen – so‐called ‘Freudian slips’ – reveal unconscious processes.

The task of the psychotherapist is to expose these repressions which have such a negative effect on life. Psychoanalysis (a term coined by Freud) aims to lay bare the unconscious and untreated traumatic experiences, by assisting the patient to raise them up into consciousness. Through persistent questioning, the analyst can identify repressed traumas which are having so negative an effect upon the patient, and enable the patient to deal with them by bringing them into the open.

As we noted earlier, Freud's views on the origin of religion need to be considered in two stages: first, its origins in the development of human history in general, and second, its origins in the case of the individual person. We may begin by dealing with his account of the psychogenesis of religion in the human species in general, as it is presented in Totem and Taboo.

Developing his earlier observation that religious rites are similar to the obsessive actions of his neurotic patients, Freud declared that religion was basically a distorted form of an obsessional neurosis. His studies of obsessional patients (such as the ‘Wolf Man’) led him to argue that such disorders were the consequence of unresolved developmental issues, such as the association of ‘guilt’ and ‘being unclean’ which he associated with the ‘anal’ phase in childhood development. He suggested that aspects of religious behaviour (such as the ritual cleansing ceremonies of Judaism) could arise through similar obsessions.

Freud argued that the key elements in all religions included the veneration of a father figure and a concern for proper rituals. Freud traces the origins of religion to the Oedipal complex. At some point in the history of the human race, Freud argues (without substantiation), the father figure had exclusive sexual rights over females in his tribe. The sons, unhappy at this state of affairs, overthrew the father figure and killed him. Thereafter, they are haunted the secret of parricide, and its associated sense of guilt. Religion, according to Freud, has its origins in this prehistorical parricidal event, and for this reason has guilt as a major motivating factor. This guilt requires purging or expiation, for which various rituals were devised.

The emphasis within Christianity upon the death of Christ and the veneration of the risen Christ seemed to Freud to be a superb illustration of this general principle. ‘Christianity, having arisen out of a father‐religion, became a son‐religion. It has not escaped the fate of having to get rid of the father.’ The ‘totem meal’, Freud argued, had its direct counterpart in the Christian celebration of communion.

Freud's account of the social origins of religion is not taken with great seriousness, and is often regarded as a ‘period piece’, bearing witness to the highly optimistic and somewhat simplistic theories which were emerging in the aftermath of the general acceptance of the Darwinian theory of evolution. His account of the origins of religion in the individual is, however, more significant. Once more, the theme of the veneration of a ‘father figure’ emerges as significant. Interestingly, Freud's account of the development of religion in individuals seems not to rest upon careful study of the actual development of such views in children, but an observance of similarities (often rather superficial ones, it has to be said) between some adult neuroses and some religious beliefs and practices, particularly those of Judaism and Roman Catholicism.

In an essay on a childhood memory of Leonardo da Vinci (1910), Freud sets out his explanation of individual religion.

Psychoanalysis has made us familiar with the intimate connection between the father complex and belief in God; it has shown us that a personal God is, psychologically, nothing other than an exalted father, and it brings us evidence every day of how young people lose their religious beliefs as soon as their father's authority breaks down. Thus we recognize that the roots of the need for religion are in the parental complex.

The veneration of the father figure has its origins in childhood. When going through its oedipal phase, Freud argues, the child has to deal with anxiety over the possibility of being punished by the father. The child's response to this threat is to venerate the father, identify with him, and to project what it knows of the father's will in the form of the superego.

Freud explored the origins of this projection of an ideal father figure in The Future of an Illusion. Religion represents the perpetuation of a piece of infantile behaviour in adult life. Religion is simply an immature response to the awareness of helplessness, by going back to one's childhood experiences of paternal care: ‘my father will protect me; he is in control’. Belief in a personal God is thus little more than an infantile delusion, the projection of an idealized father figure.

Yet Freud's highly negative approach to religion was not the only view on the matter to emerge from early psychoanalytic circles. Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was the son of a Swiss pastor, and was closely associated with Freud from 1907. In 1914, Jung resigned as president of the International Psychoanalytical Society, an action which signalled his growing distance from Freud on a number of matters, particularly the latter's emphasis upon the libido. As we noted earlier, Freud is noted for a hostile and reductionist approach to religion. Jung is generally regarded as being more sympathetic to religion than Freud, and clearly wished to distance himself from Freud's reductionism. While Jung remained sympathetic to Freud's belief that the ‘image of God’ is essentially a human projection, he located its origins increasingly in the ‘collective unconscious’. Humans are naturally religious; it is not something which they ‘invent’. Perhaps more significantly, he stressed the positive aspects of religion, particularly in relation to an individual's progress towards wholeness and fulfilment.

Up to this point, we have considered two landmark contributions to the psychology of religion. But what about wider trends within the discipline? Ralph W. Hood, widely regarded as a major figure in American psychology of religion, distinguishes six psychological schools of thought regarding religion. In what follows, we shall identify each of these, and offer some comments.

This discussion of possible psychological accounts of religious belief raises some important questions, one of which is whether human beings are naturally inclined to believe in God. This question has been considered in some detail by the relatively new discipline of the cognitive science of religion, and we shall consider these discussions in more detail in the concluding section of this chapter.

The Cognitive Science of Religion: Is Religion ‘Natural’?

The discipline of the cognitive science of religion develops scientific approaches to the study of religion that combine methods and theory drawn from cognitive, developmental, and evolutionary psychology to explore the causal explanations of religious phenomena across peoples and populations. This approach brings theories from the cognitive sciences to bear on the question of why religious thought and action is so common in humans, and why religious phenomena take their observed forms. Setting the metaphysical claims of religion to one side, what is observed as ‘religion’ can be regarded as a complex amalgam of essentially human phenomena, which are communicated and regulated by natural human perception and cognition.

This important field of research focuses on the role of human cognitive processes in religious belief and action. To its critics, this risks overlooking or underplaying the importance of other factors. Armin Geertz, for example, has argued that the approach fails to address adequately issues that arise from physical embodiment and cultural location. Geertz argues for ‘an expanded view of cognition that is anchored in brain and body (embrained and embodied), deeply dependent on culture (enculturated) and extended and distributed beyond the borders of individual brains.’

Cognitive science of religion treats religion as an essentially natural phenomenon, which arises through – not in spite of – natural human ways of thinking. This represents a significant challenge to some ways of evaluating religion, often inspired by the agenda of Enlightenment rationalism, which held that religion arose through the ‘sleep of reason’ – in other words, through the suspension of normal human critical and rational faculties. Discussion of this ‘naturalness‐of‐religion’ thesis presently focuses on three main issues:

The cognitive science of religion does not depend upon a rigorous definition of ‘religion’ in order to proceed. Indeed, some would argue that the emergence of this new cognitive approach to religion was motivated by dissatisfaction with the vagueness of previous theories of religion, and their inability to be empirically tested. As Justin Barrett notes:

Rather than specify what religion is and try to explain it in whole, scholars in this field have generally chosen to approach ‘religion’ in an incremental, piecemeal fashion, identifying human thought or behavioral patterns that might count as ‘religious’ and then trying to explain why those patterns are cross‐culturally recurrent. If the explanations turn out to be part of a grander explanation of ‘religion’, so be it. If not, meaningful human phenomena have still been rigorously addressed.

Ann Taves and others have defended such an approach, which is sensitive to the criticism that religion is not a ‘natural kind’. Religion is a social construct, not an empirical concept. Religion may be a socially constructed concept; it is nevertheless made up of a wide range of constituent phenomena which are open to empirical study. The method of ‘fractionation’ is proposed as a means of ‘reverse engineering’ the social construct of religion and breaking it down into distinct phenomena or ‘building blocks’ which are open to empirical investigation. Jonathan Jong has pointed out how the cognitive strategy of fractionating belief allows it to be resolved into distinct phenomena, each with its distinct sets of causes and effects, open to scientific evaluation.

A further element of importance is the recognition that religion is not primarily about what might be termed ‘theological’ notions – such as the omnipotence of God or the doctrine of the Trinity. Religious perceptions tend to be much simpler and more ‘natural’ than their theological counterparts. Whereas some have argued that religious beliefs are impositions upon human beings, the cognitive science of religion suggests that there are natural predispositions towards believing in God. Two themes of particular importance in developing this stance are the notion of ‘minimally counterintuitive concepts’ and the ‘hyperactive agency detection device’ (HADD), both of which we shall discuss further.

Pascal Boyer has argued that religious beliefs belong to a class of ideas which could be called ‘minimally counterintuitive concepts’. By this, he means that, on the one hand, they fulfil certain intuitive assumptions about any given class of objects (such as persons or objects), yet on the other hand violate some of those assumptions in ways which make the resulting concepts particularly exciting or memorable. In other words, religious notions are both plausible and memorable. They both belong to the everyday world, while standing out from it. They are easily represented, and highly memorable. It is not quite clear, however, whether Boyer is arguing that counterintuitiveness is a universal characteristic of all religion, or whether it is simply an adequate criterion for a ‘religious’ belief.

A number of workers in the field of the cognitive science of religion have proposed that humanity is generally characterized by possessing an ‘hyperactive agency detection device’ (HADD). An early statement of this idea can be found in Stewart Guthrie's Faces in the Clouds (1993), which set out the idea of ‘agency detection’ as a human perceptual function. The idea, however, is developed in more cognitive terms by writers such as Justin Barrett:

Part of the reason people believe in gods, ghosts, and goblins also comes from the way in which our minds, particularly our agency detection device (ADD) functions. Our ADD suffers from some hyperactivity, making it prone to find agents around us, including supernatural ones, given fairly modest evidence of their presence. This tendency encourages the generation and spread of god concepts.

The argument here, deriving from evolutionary psychology, is that human beings have a naturally selected agency detection system, which is wired to respond to fragmentary information in the environment which might point to a looming threat from an agent – such as a predatory mammal or hostile human being. The original evolutionary function of the hyperactive agency detection device was thus to detect and evade predators; the evolutionary by‐product is a susceptibility to infer superhuman beings from noises and movements in the environment.

Yet some have questioned the empirical basis of a hyperactive agency detection device in the first place. Neil van Leeuwen and Michiel van Elk have drawn attention to its evidential underdetermination and offer in its place an alternative account of the process of the formation of religious beliefs. Their ‘interactive religious experience model’ argues that agency intuitions are not the major cause of religious belief; rather, a general belief in supernatural agents causes people to seek situations that trigger agency intuitions and related experiences.

So where do these reflections take us? One obvious question concerns whether the ‘minimal counterintuitiveness’ approach to religious beliefs implies or entails the non‐existence of the referents of these concepts and beliefs? While most cognitive scientists of religion state that this is not to be regarded an implication of the theory, it is clear that some scholars in the field (such as Scott Atran and Pascal Boyer) tend to imply that this ‘minimal counterintuitiveness’ theory excludes or precludes a supernatural interpretation of the data, whereas others (such as Justin Barrett) hold that they do not. This raises a question that goes back to Sigmund Freud, whose precommitment to atheism famously led to his ‘explanations’ of religion: are cognitive scientists of religion allowing their worldviews to shape their interpretation of the data?

So how might Christian theology respond to the suggestion that we are predisposed to believe in God? For many theologians, this is simply a scientific description of what has long been held to be theologically true. The idea that humanity is inclined to quest for God is deeply embedded in many theological traditions. The biblical maxim that ‘You [God] have placed eternity in our hearts’ (Ecclesiastes 3:11) is one way of expressing this. Others might point to the famous prayer of Augustine of Hippo: ‘You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.’ There are clearly some intriguing possibilities for further exploration here.

Yet there are also awkward questions that need to be considered. Many religious writers appear to assume that the cognitive science of religion offers at least some implicit support for theistic belief. Yet others have called this into question. Jonathan Jong, Christopher Kavanagh, and Aku Visala have pointed out that the cognitive processes in question arguably lead as much to idolatry as to theism, by legitimizing the deification of entities within the world.

The tragedy of the classical theologian is precisely that idolatry is easier on the mind than orthodoxy. Powerful humanoid figures that can be appeased or appealed to for this or that practical reason – gods – make much more sense to most people than the God of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim classical theist theological traditions.

The point being made here is that there is a long and somewhat problematic pathway from the cognitive science of religion to classical theism – and that the pathway to polytheism or idolatry is intellectually simpler and more intuitive. This point was made by the theologian John Calvin in the sixteenth century, who argued that natural human instincts needed to be informed and redirected by the basic structures of the Christian faith – otherwise their trajectory ended in the worship of the natural order, rather than the God who lies behind it.

So does the cognitive science of religion cast any light on the dialogue between science and religion? There are good reasons for thinking that this new discipline may help clarify this relationship. In an important recent study, Robert N. McCauley (Emory University, Atlanta) has argued that religious belief is natural. McCauley argues that a belief or action is to be thought of as ‘natural’ when it is ‘familiar, obvious, self‐evident, intuitive, or held or done without reflection’ – in other words, when it ‘seems part of the normal course of events’.

Belief in God or supernatural agents therefore seems, McCauley argues, entirely natural. Yet he makes the important point that, when it comes to offering detailed explanations of what is believed about such supernatural agents, ways of thinking rapidly emerge which seem very unnatural. Although McCauley does not phrase it in precisely in this way, his argument is basically that a basic belief in God or divine agency is much more natural than the theological descriptions which arise from this belief. In other words, the enterprise traditionally known as ‘systematic theology’ seems relatively unnatural, in that it involves a number of apparently counterintuitive steps. The doctrine of the Trinity would be a good example of a counterintuitive or ‘unnatural’ belief, which stands in contrast to a very natural belief in divine agency.

So what of the natural sciences? McCauley argues that, in certain ways, the natural sciences are experienced as unnatural, in that they involve methods, assumptions, and outcomes which often – though by no means invariably – do not seem to be natural, in the sense of that which is ‘familiar, obvious, self‐evident, intuitive, or held or done without reflection’. McCauley illustrates this point in a number of ways, particularly by noting the counterintuitive character of innovative scientific theories.

Science challenges our intuitions and common sense repeatedly. With the triumph of new theories, scientists and sometimes even the public must readjust their thinking. When first advanced, the suggestions that the earth moves, that microscopic organisms can kill human beings, and that solid objects are mostly empty space were no less contrary to intuition and common sense than the most counterintuitive consequences of quantum mechanics have proved for us in the twentieth century.

As McCauley suggests, the point will be familiar to any who have wrestled with the deeply counterintuitive notions of quantum mechanics. Yet even classical physical notions – such as the idea of ‘action at a distance’, which so troubled Isaac Newton – seem to contradict common sense.

There is yet another level at which science appears to be unnatural. McCauley argues that the scientific enterprise demands extensive training and preparation, which often involves habits of thought and practice which seem some distance removed from the ordinary world.

Not only is scientific knowledge not something that human beings acquire naturally, its mastery does not even guarantee that someone will know how to do science. After four centuries of astonishing accomplishment, science remains an overwhelmingly unfamiliar activity, even to most of the learned public and even in those cultures where its influence is substantial.

In suggesting that, in some respects, the natural sciences are ‘unnatural’, McCauley is not suggesting that they are wrong. He is simply making the point that they require developing certain ways of thinking which are not self‐evidently true, and often seem to fly in the face of everyday experience or common sense.

So what are the implications of these ideas for the dialogue between science and religion? McCauley's analysis suggests that the dialogue is not really between science and religion, but between science and theology. Both science and theology represent ways of thinking which are at least one step removed from the everyday and natural habits of thought which are typical of religion. This point would also be defended, although on slightly different grounds, by Thomas F. Torrance (00‐00), who wished to emphasize the specificity of the Christian vision of reality by stressing its Trinitarian and incarnational roots, rather than the ‘religious’ character of the Christian faith.

Conclusion

This book aimed to introduce the vast field of science and religion by offering an overview of some of its major themes and focusing on a limited series of topics of particular interest. Inevitably, this has meant that much has been left out. In the opening chapter, I introduced the analogy of the chessboard, making the point that we would only have enough space to survey some of its spaces. It is, however, hoped that the issues discussed in this work will help you orientate yourself within this wide field. This work has focused on general issues, particularly those arising from the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of science, and has tended to discuss religious issues primarily from a Christian perspective. However, the limits of this volume are easily transcended by engaging other religious traditions – such as Islam and Judaism – and by engaging a wider range of issues in the natural sciences than those discussed here.

For Further Reading

Moral Philosophy: Science and Morality

Philosophy of Science: Is Reality Limited to What the Sciences Can Disclose?

Theology: Transhumanism, the ‘Image of God’ and Human Identity

Mathematics: Science and the Language of God

Physics: The Anthropic Principle

Evolutionary Biology

Psychology of Religion

Cognitive Science of Religion

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