Clayton’s Emergings

Dan Dennett is disappointed that theists in general, and theologians in particular, don’t take science seriously. They are more interested in immunization strategies. They retreat into faith assertions, deny (or don’t understand) evolution, and show little interest in philosophical arguments.  Presumably Dan will be making some of these claims when he speaks at Scripps, one of the Claremont Colleges, on February 16^th.

In the spirit of empirical feedback, it would be great to put some of these claims to the test. So I suggest that Dan join me in a brief, one-hour debate on some of these themes while he’s here on campus. Albrecht Auditorium is available, and Claremont Graduate University is ready to make special arrangements for live online streaming of the discussion, so that it can be available to everyone.

There’s a little history behind this call, which you can find here and here. When we were both at the big Darwin Festival at the University of Cambridge in early July 2009, Dan came to listen to my paper on Darwin and theology. Afterwards he publicly expressed his disappointment that such a topic would be on the agenda at the Darwin Fest. Later in the same session I invited Dan to enter into a public discussion with me on some of the broader philosophical and theological questions raised by biology today, even listing some of the topics where (in my view) productive discussion is possible. Dan chose not to enter into that debate. But he did post a blog on Richard Dawkins’ website a few days later, complaining about the session and claiming that “neither speaker had anything to offer.”

Since the debate that Dan calls for is one that I’m eager to join him in, shouldn’t we take a few minutes when he’s on campus here in Claremont to let it happen?

To make this invitation to dialogue more warm and friendly, Iet me close with a personal invitation to Dan:

Here’s a recent discussion on the emerging church with South African Emergent leader Nic Paton. Nic is involved with The Sout Project, which he calls a “world emergent endeavour,” and has just produced a new album, “Story.” In this short discussion we talk about the new religion/science debate and how it links to emergent Christianity. Enjoy!

One of the hardest parts of Christian theology to reconcile with science is eschatology, or beliefs about final things. Whether it involves affirmations of the second coming of Christ or talk of “a new heaven and a new earth,” eschatology seems worlds apart (as it were) from the scientific method and cosmology’s predictions about the far-future universe. And yet some hope for a future in which God will be “all in all” seems intrinsic to the Christian faith.

I had the chance to struggle with these questions this fall. The following podcast gives you a sense of the difficulties and the kind of answer I’d like to give. It’s titled “Living toward an Open Future: What are the Theological Conditions for Hope in an Age of Science?” I offer my special thanks to my hosts, and to the audience members who asked probing questions, at the following institutions: the Humboldt-University in Berlin, Germany, and to the Guardini Foundation and the DFG, who sponsored the conference at which the talk was delivered; St. Andrews Presbyterian College, in Laurinburg, NC, and to the John Calvin McNair Annual Lectureship; McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; and Emmanuel College of Victoria University, the University of Toronto, Ontario.

These are difficult issues, and there is no simple, easy, and definitive answer. Christians in good conscience will come down in very different places. But I do believe that it is important to struggle with the questions. I hope that the podcast will encourage you to ask deeper questions and to begin to formulate your own responses.

Podcast: “Living toward an Open Future: What are the Theological Conditions for Hope in an Age of Science?”

Sometimes the best way to make a point about what science can do is to recognize what it doesn’t do. And no one is better qualified to make this point than the eminent scholar, John Cleese. This clip will not resolve any of the really difficult and interesting debates about genetic and epigenetic influences and how they are related. But it is a good reminder of what we shouldn’t expect genetics to explain.

Rather than getting red in the face about reductionists in general, and genetic reduction in particular, sometimes laughter is the best medicine.

This month I began doing a monthly column in Religion Dispatches . You’ll find it here, followed by a (wide) variety of responses.

I copy the column in below as well… and encourage you to post your responses.

– Philip

“Through the study and analysis of a system’s components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof…” (http://www.intelligentdesign.org/whatisid.php)

“People of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything.” (Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great, 13).

A friend quipped recently that the two topics a liberal and a conservative should never discuss together are abortion and health care reform. She should have added the topic of science and religion to her list.

Why do attempts at reasonable discussion between science and religion in our society today range from disastrous to nonexistent? We need to step back and understand the broader context. Why do these discussions fail? How did the contemporary impasse arise? How might we as a society move beyond it?

A little background:

A bloody family feud

Think of it as a family feud running across three generations. The first generation spans from the Greeks through the early Medieval period. During this period, philosophy and theology set the terms of engagement. Knowledge for Aristotle and his medieval followers (epistēmē) was created in the image of philosophy. The Latin term for science, scientia<>, meant any form of organized enquiry. Unfortunately for the birth of modern science, in such a context one couldn’t even begin to make a case for the primacy of empirical observation, much less for quantum mechanics or evolutionary theory as we know them today.

Call the scientists and philosophers of modernity the next generation. The sons and daughters of the late medieval period simply had no choice. The only way they could carve out a space for their new empirical modes of enquiry was to flatly reject the medieval authorities and their assumptions. Thus Descartes proclaimed that everything is open to doubt; Francis Bacon berated the four “idols” of traditional philosophy and theology; and Galileo, somewhat more gently, wrote of “The Book of Nature,” written “in the language of mathematics,” as separate from the Book of Scripture.

This Declaration of Independence may have been peaceful at first. But it quickly deteriorated into a warfare fully as bloody as the French Revolution. Thus Andrew Dickson White rightly characterized the modern period as “A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.” Christopher Hitchens is only reflecting the prejudices of his generation when he expresses his hatred of religion in God is Not Great: “Religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.”

For the children of the third generation, however — call them postmodern, for want of a better word — the battle to the death between science and religion no longer seems either necessary or productive. Like children who can’t comprehend why their parents and grandparents must fight so much, this new generation has simply discarded the assumptions on which the centuries-long war was based. Thus the last few decades have seen multiple proposals for harmonizing, if not unifying, science and religion. (More on these in future weeks.)

This saga of three generations is crucial for understanding the current cultural situation. Some of the implications are deadly serious. Others come with a touch of irony. It amuses me, for example, to recognize that the much-touted New Atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris) are not the wave of the future. Instead, this analysis leaves them looking like dinosaurs, throwbacks to an earlier (second) generation attitude toward science and religion.

The battlelines today

So much for inter-generational histories in the abstract. The juicy stuff always lies in the details. When we survey the opposing armies, what do we see?

• The forces of science. Those who start from the standpoint of science fall into three main groups: the New Atheists, who argue that the mere existence of religion is a threat to science and weakens it; the “privately religious” scientists, who argue that their private faith supplements their science but who spend rather less time talking about how this actually works; and the True Separationists, who argue that the two spheres are, and ought to be, completely independent and have nothing to do with each other.

Relatively few scientists are working constructively to build conceptual bridges between science and religion. (Of course, this makes the few who are all the more important.) Most bench scientists are suspicious of those who call for an integration of science and religion, a new unitary perspective that draws from and learns from both. New Age, Eastern, and some liberal theologians, for example, make such calls, and upon them are heaped the greatest amounts of scorn.

• The forces of religion. Publically, most American Jews and Christians express interest in the religion-science discussion. In most cases, though, the motivation is defensive; people don’t want anyone to think that their faith undercuts or opposes science in any way. It’s quite another matter to view the discussion as a two-way street — one that might require believers to rethink and reformulate some of the important tenets of their religious tradition.

Learning to work together

In the American public square today, it’s hard to find discussions between science and religion that achieve what our society most needs: genuine self-criticism on both sides, born of the recognition that both sides will have to do some bending if any sort of truce is to be achieved.

Yet if we do not begin to engage in productive partnerships, how will we address those urgent global issues, such as global climate change, that can be solved only if the sciences and the religious traditions learn to work in tandem?

In future columns I’ll present specific cases of science-religion confrontation in our culture, analyzing the disasters and searching for cases of constructive engagement.

Next time: Evolution and Creation Fight to the Death … and What Emerges from the Ashes.